The Return of Heroes
by m214h
Summary: The SGC is frozen in time after an attack gone awry. Seventy years later, can they team up with a new generation of heroes to keep the world safe?
1. Chapter 1- Be Right Back

**A/N: Hello everyone, this is my first fanfiction. It's an Overwatch/Stargate crossover, which I don't think has been done before.**

 **Anyways: read, enjoy, review. This is a new activity for me, and I am always looking to improve.**

 **Also: there is a prologue, I am having someone else proofread it before I post it, it should be up in a few days. You should be able to figure out the basic premise from this chapter though.**

 **Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended. The** _ **Stargate**_ **franchise is owned by MGM, while** _ **Overwatch**_ **is owned by Blizzard Entertainment. This story is not officially a part of the** _ **Overwatch**_ **or** _ **Stargate**_ **universes. I am not using this story to earn profit. Finally, I am grateful towards MGM and Blizzard for creating these two wonderful fictional universes, as well as to the wikis for OW and SG for providing me with details for their respective canons.**

Chapter 1

When Overwatch was at its height, Watchpoint Gibraltar was a beehive of activity. The base was one of three Overwatch facilities with orbital launch capabilities and was responsible for the protection of northern Africa and Europe. Thirty years after Overwatch was disbanded however, the base appeared as little more than an empty shell. One day, in the fall of 2074, the dilapidated appearance of the facility inspired a young woman approaching its northern fence to stop and briefly recall back to a time when she called it home.

Lena snapped out of her reminiscing to refocus on her objective. Winston was right: Petras act or no, the world was facing danger once again, and she had taken an oath to protect it. Without further delay, she confirmed that nobody was watching, and used two blinks to hop the fence, and another to disappear through a broken door.

"Welcome home Tracer." Athena, the AI designed by her old friend and scientist Winston to operate the base and accompany them on missions, greeted her as she passed through several corridors to arrive in what used to be the base's command center. "If you are looking for Winston, he is currently occupied in the second basement lab."

Tracer looked around the room for a minute. There had been a fight recently; several windows were broken, some of the walls were damaged from Winston's unique electrostatic cannon as well as shotgun blasts, and the server located on the second floor had some suspicious holes in its casing. Anticipating the ex-agent's next question, Athena began to fill her in: "Shortly before Winston contacted you, Talon conducted a raid on this facility. Reaper wanted to extract the identities of all former agents from my databanks. Fortunately, Winston outsmarted him."

Tracer opened her mouth in shock and concern for her friends, and immediately had another question. "If they know we're here, why've you been calling agents to this location?"

"There are no safe bases left; as a former leading agent in Blackwatch, Moira O'Deorian was able to give the locations of all their sites to Talon, and the rest were already public knowledge." Athena replied, a hint of dejection seeping into her electronic voice. "Winston wants to get a few more agents together before establishing a completely new base; he does not have the manpower right now to do it himself."

Lena was about to ask who else had responded, hoping that she would be able to see a few of her friends again, when Athena interrupted her: "Winston is asking to see you, he seems to be working on something important." Lena looked disappointed, but immediately started working her way towards her friend's lab, pulling out a few items from her backpack before she entered.

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"Wiiiiiiiinston… I've got your favorite!" Lena announced herself as she walked through the door into Winston's lab. He didn't turn to face her, whatever was showing on the screen must have been really compelling, but she could practically hear the faux-annoyed look on his face as he responded: "For the last time, no more bananas!" Nevertheless, he quickly accepted the fruits and jar of peanut butter that Lena handed to him with his hands as he continued to use his dexterous feet to type on the keyboard. "What'cha looking at?"

Overwatch had always been a magnet for strange people. "Adventurers and oddities" was even a part of their slogan. Winston, however, always stood out, at least to outsiders. Born almost thirty years ago on a lunar research colony, he had been the subject of a series of experiments intended to determine the viability of long term space travel on humans. Lena had never quite understood how that involved genetically modified, super-intelligent gorillas, but it was still an interesting story. Anyhow, Winston had formed a bond with one of the human scientists living in the base, Doctor Harold Winston, and had quickly picked up on his love for pure science and his belief that it could make the world a better place. From what she had heard, Lena would have loved to have met Dr. Winston, which was part of what made his fate so tragic.

The other Gorillas on the base did not like being the subject of experiments. Lena could understand that, being under constant observation and going through seemingly endless trials to determine exactly what was wrong with her had been almost as bad as the chronal disassociation. Almost. The Gorillas, however, had taken their frustration farther than Lena could have imagined herself going; they rebelled, killing the scientists before setting themselves up as the new owners of the base. Whenever he talked about it, Lena noticed a disturbingly sad look in his eyes that suggested that she shouldn't ask exactly how the scientists were killed.

Eventually, unable to forgive the others, Winston stole one of the base's return vehicles with the help of a genetically modified hamster before heading back to Earth. He and Hammond parted ways, and Winston eventually joined Overwatch, using his scientific knowledge to fight for the world as he dreamed it to be.

Lena and Winston had become friends soon after she joined. After her experimental jet accident left her with a unique and incurable condition called temporal disassociation, which caused her to become incorporeal and slowly lose her grip on reality, Winston had dropped everything to first design a temporal stabilization chamber, and then a chronal accelerator that almost brought her back in sync with normal time. The almost turned out to be a great thing, she could make quick hops ahead in time, allowing her to teleport around. She could also partially rewind herself, allowing her to undo injuries. She easily began to use her newfound abilities to conduct field missions, and quickly found herself as the new face of Overwatch.

After he helped her to overcome her condition, Lena and Winston were inseperable. This eventually led her to encourage him to design his own set of field gear: a jet pack that allowed him to leap small buildings (preferably landing on the bad guys), a electrostatic discharge cannon, and a portable shield projector that almost never failed to perform as expected.

Winston took a few moments to respond, "Did Athena fill you in?" Tracer nodded, so he continued: "I contacted Genji after I discovered the breach in our database and asked him to take a detour. It was close, but he was able to learn a few things about Sombra, as well as plant a bug on her computer and her workroom."

Lena was surprised, anyone who could breach Winston's file system had to be the best, not just good. "Well then, I'll be sure to buy him a drink next time I see him."

"I will be sure to hold you to that promise" stated a male electronic voice that didn't seem to come from any specific direction. Tracer yelped and jumped in the air before looking for the source. She quickly found it as Genji reactivated his lights and descended silently from a nondescript dark corner of the room. Tracer tried to appear cross but failed after a few seconds before breaking down into laughter. Then, she blinked up to her old friend and wrapped him in a hug which he quickly reciprocated. After a few seconds she gently pulled away before looking her old sparring partner. "You've changed" she claimed, looking inquisitively into his eyes.

"I have traveled far since Overwatch collapsed, and met someone who helped me to find peace with who I am" Genji replied. Tracer, now sitting in a chair but still looking directly at her old friend, took in every word. Back when they were both a part of Overwatch, Genji had been one of a very small number of agents who had the reflexes to track her when she used her abilities. This meant that they frequently found themselves sparring against each other, each helping the other to build their skills. Back in those days, Genji had always shown at least a trace of the rage he felt from his brother's betrayal. Most of the other agents didn't see it, but Lena knew him too well not to notice. Or, she looked into his eyes again, to miss its absence.

"Have you talked to Doc yet?" Lena asked, raising an eyebrow at Genji, whose eyes signaled a blush at the mention of his savior. Doctor Angela Ziegler had fought tooth and nail to preserve his life after finding his body on a mission to Japan, replacing a significant amount of his body with high precision prosthetics. Genji had been unable to handle the transition alone; in his youth, he had been extremely attractive, and had led an almost hedonistic lifestyle. Now, he could barely look at himself in the mirror, his black hair and his brown eyes the only recognizable parts of a sleek, cybernetic body. So, Angela had once again intervened, convincing Genji that his life wasn't over, and that the only person who thought that he was either a monster or a pitiful wreck was himself. It had taken time, but Dr. Zeigler, who had already saved his body, also saved his soul. During this process, the two had formed a close bond which was reinforced when Genji returned the favor during a botched mission in an old Chinese Research facility. The two had never casually discussed exactly what they had seen in there, but the rumor was that they had encountered some talon operatives experimenting with a mind control/torture device. The only thing that was known for sure was that the device had been destroyed by several highly motivated slashes from Genji's 'magical' katana.

"I have, I am looking forward to seeing her when she arrives" responded Genji, himself taking a seat.

At that moment, Winston chimed in: "I think I found something." He was watching a split screen monitor; one screen showed a woman in her early thirties with some strange gadgets attached to the side of her head working at a large holographic computer station. The other screen showed output from what Lena assumed was the computer station itself. The latter screen had highlighted what appeared to be geographical coordinates.

"What's this?" asked Lena, blinking over to look at the screens.

"After Genji planted the bug, we discovered that 'Sombra' is evidently a single person" Winston began. "She seems to work with Talon, but frequently pursues her own agenda. Lately, she has been searching through old classified military records from the Chinese, American, and Russian governments. She seems to believe that they somehow tie back to a larger global conspiracy." He finished by describing what they had found: "We aren't able to look very deep into her computer systems without her detecting our presence, but it looks like she accidentally typed a location into an unsecure document."

Lena could see where this was going, "So we need to investigate?" she asked.

"Yes, and quickly" Winston replied. "She just found it in what I think are some old American military files from the mid 2000's. If she hasn't followed this lead yet, we may be able to beat her to it."

While Winston had been speaking, Lena and Genji had followed their almost instinctive routine; Lena had retrieved her goggles and pulse pistols, Genji had replaced his visor and strapped his katana to his back. Winston turned around, expecting to ask them to prepare to depart, only to find them fully suited up, waiting for instructions. "Um… I suppose that almost covers it. The objective is to capture Sombra. The site is an old American military base in Colorado. The jump ship is waiting in the hangar, try to be stealthy when you leave." Winston was sad to not be able to go into the field, but ultimately, he was a scientist first, agent second, and they couldn't leave the base unguarded against Talon, especially when there were more agents on their way. "I'll be talking to you the entire way, good luck."

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Sombra owed allegiance to nobody. She had learned early on that the world was a cruel, vicious place. The only way to survive was to either be lucky, or to be smart. Her parents had been killed during the way, and she intended to survive, so her choice was simple. She learned how to hack computers, how to hack people, and how both systems were tied together. Now, at thirty years old, she was the best hacker on the planet. There were still secrets that she could not access, but between her skills and her contacts, they would not be out of her reach for long.

Sombra could easily pass for an everyday woman. Her light brown skin, average height, and unremarkable eyes allowed her to blend in almost anywhere; provided that she simply shifted her hair to cover her neural implants and lost her trademark uzi. In Talon's base however, there was no need to go unnoticed, except when she felt like tormenting one of the seemingly never-ending new grunts. On the base, everyone knew to avoid the snarky, purple clad, uzi toting hacker who seemed to know more about everyone's dirty laundry than they did. And that was just the way she liked it, it freed up her attention to deal with more external nuisances.

Sombra scoffed as she left her quarters. Those _idiotas_ working with Overwatch had taken their sweet time finding the old American base. She was almost tempted turn to the bug and tell them where she was going, but her 'professional' pride wouldn't allow it. She stopped briefly, maybe the ninja wasn't entirely incompetent, she almost hadn't noticed him sneaking around her quarters when he placed the bug, and she was very difficult to get by. Also, the bug wasn't anything like the hardware she had, but it was probably better than what she could expect from the 'technically inclined' members of Talon. What she hadn't let slip was that the American military evidently had an interest in this site that went beyond a simple decades-old wrecked mountain fortress, and consequently not react well to an intrusion by two members of a disbanded peacekeeping force.

Her contact in the American Airforce evidently didn't know why the mountain was so secure. A few all-nighters spent perusing classified files revealed that nobody did, just that there were presidential level orders dating back to 2004 that the base was strictly off-limits. There was even a video showing then president Henry Hayes reiterating those orders to some of his staff. Had she been a bit more naïve, Sombra would have sworn that she had seen a look of loss in his eyes.

Sombra snapped herself out of her reminiscing to go over her plan one more time. It really was a clever plan, if she did say so herself. And she did. In her head, at least.

Her contact would, on her signal, report that some intruders had breached the perimeter around the remains of the Cheyenne mountain complex. As a reward for his vigilance on what was increasingly considered a punishment duty, he would likely be promoted to a more meaningful posting. In exchange, after the ruckus had cleared, he would 'forget' to send a team into the old escape tunnel that she planned to explore, leaving her to inflitrate the underground base undisturbed. Additionally, the capture of several Overwatch agents would make them easy targets for Reaper, which is what she planned to emphasize if he caught her attempting to take out an unauthorized drop ship again. She would have normally been concerned about how much of her plan relied on the American _adúltero_ , but she was convinced that the threat of the scandalous photographs that she had shown him making their way back to his wife should he double cross her left that base covered.

Sombra arrived at the dropship. After convincing the grunt guarding it that Reaper was looking for him and implying that he would be better off if he didn't succeed, she silently took off as the infamous assassins known as Widomaker and Reaper watched disinterestedly from a nearby window.

"Are we going to have to bail her out again?" asked the Talon 'trained' sniper.

The man next to her sighed. Some people working with Talon would have accused him of being overdramatic, 'edgy' even, as a result of his all black uniform, skull shaped mask, and constant complaining about the performance of all but two of the people that he worked with. Just not to his face, or anywhere where there was a remote chance if it being recorded and getting back to him.

He thought for a moment, "probably," he replied.

"Let's go then" replied the blue skinned sniper with what almost sounded like a hint of exasperation in her voice. Both figures started towards the hangar. Unseen, or at least unnoticed by the reaper, a grunt in a nearby hallway saw him coming and fainted, falling back into the storage closet he had been hiding in.

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Sombra arrived a bit later than she had planned due to a storm over the Atlantic. She was annoyed; none of the weather services had reported it, probably thinking that it was too small to be noteworthy. She arrived, and immediately found the escape tunnel. She tossed her translocator towards the bottom, confident that its internal gyros would stabilize it before it landed. Then she climbed into a nearby tree and began watching for her scapegoats.

Unknown to Sombra, as the translocator approached the bottom, it breached the edge of the time dilation field encompassing the SGC and would have appeared to freeze in place to any outside observer.

Sombra was not kept waiting long, but a new problem presented itself. She thought that the agents would take the stealthy approach: landing well outside the perimeter before slowly making their way into the base, thus giving the Americans plenty of time to catch up to them and prevent them from escaping. This was not what they did, instead, they were opting to land almost on top of the tunnel, which would allow them to run away the moment that the Americans showed up.

Sombra was processing this development as the ship landed, disgorging one of the most famous ex-agents of Overwatch. Sombra had heard far more than she wanted to about her from her discussions with Widomaker. Ever since the cheeky brit had managed to disarm her during an op in Liverpool, the normally emotionless assassin refused to go on a mission without a solid backup plan to deal with the time jumping nuisance. Neither she nor Reaper had been inclined to complain about this, Tracer had in fact shown up several times on other missions, and Sombra didn't think that she could survive having to listen to her 'witty' one liners and gloating if she did manage to catch one of them. Although, Widomaker's concern did sometimes seem to go into a full-blown obsession, almost as if there were more than just professional rivalry being directed at the Overwatch icon, not that Sombra would ever dare to suggest that to either of them.

Sombra was pulled back to reality by a sudden realization. The Overwatch agents may not be as good as her, but they weren't foolish enough to send a lone agent on a mission, especially one where they expected to take prisoners. Sombra was about to bolt when a mechanical voice piped up behind her.

"Surrender, Sombra"

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Tracer and Genji had spent the first few hours of the flight catching each other up on their lives. Tracer was still with Emily and they were contemplating getting married. Genji had continued to write to Angela, who in turn had written back. The face that they refused to elaborate on the content of some of the letters gave Lena a good impression of exactly what they contained, she made a note to say a few words of encouragement to Dr. Zeigler the next time she saw her. Their discussions of their love lives was cut short when the radio crackled to life.

"Unidentified aircraft, you are violating United States airspace, respond immediately.

The two agents looked at each other. Their radio frequencies were supposed to be a secret, and their aircraft was supposed to have top-of-the-line stealth. If somebody could detect and talk to them, they were in trouble. Tracer decided that they should respond if they wanted to figure out how much trouble they were in.

"This is… the Hyde TXC73 Flybox" said Tracer, thinking quickly to invent a name that didn't scream 'Rouge Overwatch Agents.' Genji was not impressed, and he could feel him arching an eyebrow towards her through his visor. The radio replied before they could get into a discussion on cover names.

"I know that you're conducting an operation for Overwatch. I'm not going to bust you, I just want to talk."

Now the mysterious caller had their complete attention. Well, almost complete; Lena still had to pilot the plane. "Who are you?", she demanded.

The radio was silent for a few moments before the voice responded: "I am General Jonathan O'Neill, United States Air Force, retired"

Both agents visibly stiffened. A USAF general was contacting them while they were flying a highly illegal mission that involved a US military base, they had a bad feeling about where this was going. Winston immediately began to relay some background information to them: "joined the air force right out of high school, made general at age 65, currently about ninety years old." Winston was intrigued by the man's age; medicine had advanced since the omnic crisis, so the retirement age had gradually moved up to 74 years as doctors learned to slow the aging process and repair more of the damage that it did, but ninety was still an impressive age. "He also scored some impressive victories as a pilot: almost 750 hours logged in enemy airspace, and he managed to take out a Titan." Tracer was impressed; at some point, some genius (*cough, Torbjörn, *cough) had designed a skyscraper sized factory mech to quickly build high rises. Then the omnic crisis happened, and the robots appropriated the design for their own ends. Titans were the result, and the towering fortresses of weapons surrounding a mobile factory were notoriously difficult to put down. "Evidently he got in just enough fancy flying to avoid its defenses before landing a hellfire missile directly in the factory section."

Tracer replied again, awe entering her voice, "Why are you calling?", she asked.

There was a longer silence than before, then the radio replied: "You are currently pursuing someone who is attempting to infiltrate the ruins of the Cheyenne Mountain complex using an old escape tunnel, correct?" Taking the agent's stunned silence as confirmation, O'Neill continued: "The whole story behind that base is too long to get into now. The short version is that there are people trapped inside, and I would be very grateful if you were to retrieve them."

Genji replied this time: "Is the facility still active? It was heavily bombed during the crisis."

Jonathan replied, "I take it that you only looked at the files that the Talon hacker got into?"

Once again taking their silence as confirmation, he told them what Oma thought they needed to know. She had paid him a visit a few years ago, evidently the Ancients were becoming a bit lax on their policies regarding interference. He begrudgingly followed her recommendations and told them that there was a time dilation field around the base. It was almost certain that if either Tracer or Sombra attempted to use their temporal devices inside the field, it would collapse, allowing the base back into the timestream. For some reason, Oma felt that the stargate didn't qualify as need to know information.

Jonathan sighed when hearing that last bit from her, but he knew that he would probably go along with it. The secrecy surrounding the Stargate Program had been deeply ingrained into Jack O'Neill, so he had inherited it when Loki cloned him. And he did agree that the chances of them believing the full story, especially where he was getting his information from, were slim. After warning them to be careful, John ended the call before dialing another number.

"Hello Cassie" he began.

"Hello John, long time no see" replied Dr. Cassandra Fraiser.

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After they finished their strange conversation, the two agents began to speak to each other, and to their comrade back in Gibraltar.

"We need to get there quickly, it would be wrong to just let Sombra throw her translocator into the field" began Tracer.

Genji pondered her words; back in his Overwatch days, the potential injury or even death of an enemy would not have concerned him if it furthered the mission. However, after the botched mission in Rialto, he had begun to understand why Jesse had been so upset at the body count. "Agreed, but we will need a new plan."

"Sombra is probably expecting you" intruded Winston, confirming what both agents were thinking.

"What makes you think that?" Tracer asked.

"When you think about it, we saw enough of her files to lead us to the location, but nothing about the added security or time dilation device. Its almost as if she leaked just enough to get us to follow her." He explained.

"It is unlikely that Sombra knows about the time dilation field, General O'Neill implied that the files that discussed it were not breached", offered Genji. "But I agree, she is likely expecting us, we will have to alter our approach."

Both of his colleagues agreed. And so, a new plan was formed.

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Sombra was momentarily shocked. In hindsight, she should have been more careful, maybe she would have seen the cyborg coming.

Such thoughts were irrelevant. She still had one card that she could play, they might not have seen her throw the translocator. She would have to escape into the hopefully abandoned base before calling her contact. It was unlikely that they would capture the Overwatch agents, but it would give her enough space to plan her escape. She activated her translocator right as Tracer began blinking towards her tree.

At the same moment, a faint cry of pain followed by a light impact came out of the entrance to the tunnel. Genji and Tracer both figured out immediately that Sombra had attempted to translocate into the base. They walked over to the tunnel and looked at each other.

"Can we go down there?" asked Tracer to Winston.

"She cried out and landed on something, so I believe that the time dilation field has been deactivated.", He replied.

Tracer didn't feel as confident as her friend sounded. Genji was hard to read by an outside observer, but Tracer knew that he had his own doubts. "She could be hurt" she finally stated.

"Then our task is simple, we must go down there" Genji replied in a matter of fact tone.

Nodding, Lena began to use her chronal accelerator to blink down the tunnel and into the abandoned base. Genji climbed down after her far faster than any normal human could.

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Dr. Elizabeth Weir was sitting in her office when the alarms started to go off. As if in confirmation that something had gone wrong, a deep rumbling sound immediately followed. She took a moment to wonder what she had done to deserve yet another crisis just after dealing with an actual alien invasion. She quickly dismissed those thoughts as she placed her first call. "Walter, what's going on?"

Walter had an almost supernatural sense for what was going on in the SGC, especially when the base commander would want to know about it. When the call came in from Dr. Weir's office, he was already aggregating reports and looking over diagnostic information, so he was able to respond to her request quickly, if not with a fully satisfying answer.

"We've lost contact with the surface. Patrols near the upper levels are reporting that several corridors are blocked with rubble, and all surface access elevators are offline" he began. He looked at another report called in from one of the less populated parts of the base: "Airman Roberts is reporting that he caught one of the scientists fiddling with a bomb before she activated a second Go'auld device. She is being led to detention as we speak, and he sent us an image of the device."

Carter, who had been working with the other remaining members of SG1, came walking in with similar questions. She saw the device in the photograph and turned several shades paler. "Ma'am", she began tentatively. "I recognize that, it's an experimental Go'auld time dilation device", she continued. "They never got one to work, but if it belonged to Anubis, he may have been able to complete it with Ancient knowledge."

Weir sensed a headache in her near future. She had read the mission reports detailing how the Asgard had used a similar device in an attempt to trap the replicators in a single star system in their home galaxy. That plan had nearly backfired when they were able to access the device and use it to give themselves an accelerated timestream. Fortunately, SG1 had been called in to remedy that situation, so it felt ironic that they may have become victims of the same tactic. "And Andre said that she turned the device on?", she asked.

Carter looked at the picture one more time as Walter responded affirmatively. "Even a few seconds of activity could have had a significant effect. We could be years into the future, or we could have simply experienced a few extra seconds." Carter's hopes for the latter option were dashed when the next report came in: "Ma'ams, we've got reports of three prisoners at the escape hatch, two surrendered voluntarily, the third was unconscious. The two conscious ones claim that we have just come out of a time dilation field, and all three have substantial amounts of unidentified technology on them."

"Take them to detention, bring any weapons they have to Carter's lab" Doctor Weir replied. The headache had arrived, her first week in charge and she had an alien invasion immediately followed up by the entire base being tossed God knew how far into the future. All General Hammond had to deal with were your garden variety alien invasions, with the occasional minor time traveler or foothold situation. Dr. Weir wondered how the General kept a lid on the trouble that seemed to emerge from the gate. To make matters worse, another rumbling sound, louder than the first, echoed from all directions.

At least they still had power and control of the base. Weir immediately froze, trying to unthink those thoughts: she was not going to jinx herself into an even bigger crisis. She looked around for a moment, Walter and Carter were both preoccupied analyzing the reports coming in from around the base. She breathed a sigh of relief and returned to her office.

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The three airmen in charge of escorting the first prisoner were each trying to maintain the expressionless, stone cold exterior that was standard for dealing with prisoners. None of them however were having an easy go of it. It was just such a nice change to get a prisoner who just cooperated and didn't try to break out of their restraints, or attack them, or threaten them with utter annihilation. Not that she wasn't able to; the strange glowing device on her chest suggested to each of the guards that she had abilities that she wasn't using. Instead, she was trying to strike up a conversation with the lead guard.

"So… whadda they call you"

Airman Colomar didn't reply, but he did hope that nobody noticed the slight twitch of a smile on his face.

"Whadda you do around here? Is it exciting?"

Another twitch

"Are ya really from 2004?"

Airman Colomar considered her question. If her story, which she had machine gunned at them the moment they appeared in between her surrender and her identification, was true, he had some questions. Why was NORAD and the main exit inaccessible? What was that rumbling sound? Most importantly: why had nobody rescued them in seventy years? Eventually, he decided to give one of the only authorized responses to prisoner questions: "classified."

To his and the other guards' relief, she seemed to understand, and quit asking questions for the rest of the trip to holding. By the time they had arrived, each guard had decided that this had to be their favorite prisoner during their time at the SGC.

The other conscious prisoner wasn't nearly as talkative. Not that his guards minded, so long as he didn't act out of line, they were quite happy to escort the robot to a cell.

The final prisoner was unconscious, so she was disarmed and had to be carried on a stretcher by two of the airmen.

"Say, doesn't she look a bit like Alejandro?", commented the one of the guards carrying the stretcher.

Another guard, charged with carrying her uzi nodded distractedly. Evidently seventy years of weapons development had yielded uzis with wi-fi. Go figure.

He responded: "maybe they're related, didn't he have a daughter living back in Mexico?"

"Yeah", said the first guard. "I think she lived in in a small town called Dorado."

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"Ma'am, the geology department thinks that they have an explanation for that rumbling" Walter began. "The working theory is that at some point while we were frozen in time, the base above us was attacked and destroyed, or at least the first few levels were. In addition, because the field wasn't properly calibrated, there are now faults and weak spots wherever it passed through the rock."

"Is the base in danger of collapse?" Dr. Weir asked, concerned. The only exit that they had found consisted of a single, meter wide tunnel to the surface and a ladder. It would take days to evacuate all the base personnel. Additionally, after seventy years, the only people to come through that tunnel were two agents of what did not sound like a legitimate organization who had accused the third person of being a notorious criminal. Had their governments forgotten them? Were their governments still around?

"Yes, they estimate that we have about an hour before we start seeing serious structural failure" Walter replied.

That was it. They didn't have time to get everyone to the surface and didn't know enough about what was going on up there to risk asking for help. It was time to evacuate.

"Get me an open line", Doctor Weir commanded. Walter, already knowing what she was planning, handed her the microphone.

"Attention all personnel, this is Weir speaking" she began. "Whatever happened to us has compromised structural integrity around the base. The leading theory is that we have been subject to a time dilation field that has shifted us forward in time by about seventy years." She knew that she had everyone's attention now.

"NORAD was destroyed during this time; that, coupled with the damage to the supports caused by the time dilation field itself is threatening to cause complete structural collapse, so I am ordering all personnel are to report to their evacuation posts, we all need to be gone within an hour."

The stargate generated seismic tremors whenever it was activated. An ingenious system of springs and shock absorbers were able to attenuate the worst of the vibrations, but they were still there, just below human perception. About a month after the SGC's founding, this issue came up when crafting the evacuation protocols.

If the evacuation was caused by a geological problem, or if there was structural damage to the base, an evacuation through the gate could cause a more rapid collapse. Therefore, the protocol when evacuating through the gate in the presence of any geological instability was to gather all personnel as close as possible to the gate room, one of the most stable areas of the base, before opening it.

"SG1 to my office please" Doctor Weir called out to the flagship team before they left operations. "I'd like you to escort the prisoners to the gate, see what you can learn from them." SG1 nodded, they had been expecting such an instruction, and were eager to learn more about what had transpired on the surface. Especially as those events related to their frozen leader.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

"Alejandro!" called out Dr. Jackson as he raced towards the group as they made their way towards the gate room. Not that their prisoner knew what a gate was, or why they appeared to be evacuating towards the bottom of the base.

The airman acknowledged him, and nodded his head as received delivered his orders. Dr. Jackson was to begin talking to the prisoner on the way to the gate room. Evidently there wasn't time for an interrogation.

Dr. Jackson turned towards Tracer and introduced himself: "Hello, I am Doctor Daniel Jackson."

"Call me Tracer" Lena was happy to be friendly, but she wasn't sure if she should trust these people with her name yet.

Dr. Jackson decided to jump to the heart of his questions: "So you claim to be from the future?"

"I suppose that's one way of looking at it."

"How much to you know about what we do here?"

Now Lena was intrigued, was this a chance to uncover some of the secrets of the mysterious base? General O'Neill had not been forthcoming about exactly what went on down here, and she suspected that his explanation of primitive time travel experiments to be a half-truth at best.

"Not much, we were originally trying to capture Sombra" Tracer began. Before Jackson could respond, she continued, not seeming to need to take a breath: "She's the unconscious one by the way, I'd recommend putting her somewhere secure. And unpleasant. Anyways, we were on our way here when a man calling himself General Jonathan O'Neill made contact." Completely ignoring Daniel's surprised expression, she continued: "He told us that this place was trapped in a time dilation field, and that if either me or she used our tech inside of it, we'd break it." Not stopping for breath, she finished her story: "So, we tried to catch Sombra before she could climb down here, but she evidently already tossed her teleporting beacon, teleporting is a real technology now, by the way, and tried to use it to escape. I guess that she just got knocked unconscious when she appeared, because we climbed down after her, found her out, found your guards, and here I am, talking to you." She finished, finally drawing a breath.

"So, what is it you do down here?"

Daniel thought for a minute. She needed to go through the gate, there was no way they would get her to go through it without a convincing explanation. He decided that he should go with the abbreviated story, as much as it pained him. "In 1928, an archeological expedition led by Professor Paul Langford uncovered a large ring in Giza, Egypt. At the time, our government thought that it was an alien weapon, and shipped it back here for study." He paused; he had to breathe, like most normal people.

"The ring wasn't a weapon, and it sat in this base until 1996, when I was brought in to assist in deciphering the symbols by Doctor Catherine Langford. I was able to determine that the symbols present on the device represented constellations, and how to use them to activate the device. I joined the first team that was sent through, and arrived on another world."

Tracer wasn't sure if Dr. Jackson was pulling her leg or just insane. Then she noticed that her original guards looked completely unsurprised, as if they were used to this. Intrigued, she let him continue.

"We met the locals almost immediately, and quickly discovered that they were being enslaved by an alien who claimed to be their god, Ra." Dr. Jackson continued, "In fact, Ra had been to earth millennia ago before being driven off by a rebellion." He paused, "The original team had been sent with a nuclear device with the intention of eliminating any potential threat on the other side of the gate."

That didn't surprise her, America in that period was famous for their aggressive way of solving problems.

Dr. Jackson continued: "Ra captured the bomb and enhanced it, he was going to send it back through the gate. But Colonel O'Neill was able to recapture the bomb and send it back to Ra's ship, destroying it and killing everyone on board."

Tracer suspected that Dr. Jackson was leaving a few details out, but she kept listening.

"I elected to stay on the planet, the rest of the team returned here, and the gate was mothballed here for about a year, until another alien, the same species as Ra, used it to abduct several people from Abydos and Earth. At that point, I was retrieved, and the SGC, or Stargate Command was officially founded to use the gate to combat alien threats."

Now Tracer was sure they were having a go at her. Aliens pretending to be gods? Blowing up a starship with an old fashioned nuke? It sounded like one of those bad American sci-fi movies McCree used to watch in the break room.

Then she walked through a large blast door, and her world was changed forever.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Genji had the pleasure of being escorted by a blond American woman and a tall warrior. Evidently the blond woman was a major named Dr. Samantha Carter, which sounded vaguely familiar. The warrior identified himself as Teal'c, which was not like any American name he had ever heard of.

Neither of them seemed to be entirely sane. Aliens? Aliens posing as god nonetheless. The entire concept was ridiculous, and that was coming from a cyborg ninja with a magic sword. The entire situation would have elicited a laugh had he not been surrounded by heavily armed soldiers. Also, the woman was trying to explain the science behind what she called 'the stargate'. She couldn't tell, but his eyes had glazed over the moment she had mentioned "a stable, artificial wormhole." He felt bad for Winston, even if it was totally preposterous, he would have enjoyed debating physics with her.

Teal'c was another matter. He was clearly a warrior, he had what was clearly a symbol of authority on his forehead, and he carried a weapon that he had never seen before that looked like a staff with a flare at one end and what could have been a plasma emitter at the other end. That was unlikely however, the Americans didn't have energy weapons in 2004, nobody did. Teal'c claimed to be a type of alien called a Jaffa, but Genji found this hard to believe. Nevertheless, Genji was already wondering what the chances of getting this mysterious warrior to agree to a sparring match were.

Genji was pondering how Teal'c, if that was truly his name, would react to one of his wall climbing maneuvers when they appeared to shift strategies. Major Carter seemed to realize that he didn't believe them and decided to instead try to determine what they had missed. Genji was happy to oblige them, he told them about the rise and attack of the omnics. Genji briefly felt sorry for the major when she looked slightly sick as she heard the destruction that the omnics had inflicted on the world while she had been frozen in time. He noted their expressions of approval when he described how the nations of the world had come together to form Overwatch, and he felt slightly embarrassed at their disapproval when he described Blackwatch. They both looked disappointed and alarmed when he finally described how Overwatch had been dissolved and its very nature criminalized. Finally, Genji noted a look of relief when he revealed that Overwatch was being reassembled in secret, its agents unwilling to abandon their oaths to protect the world from danger.

Or, at least, the woman named Carter showed those emotions. Teal'c was almost as good as he was about maintaining an image of stoicism, and he didn't have the help of a full-face visor.

Genji also delved into his personal history: the Shimada clan and their unique ability to control the spirit dragons. Genji was surprised when Carter and Teal'c, both clearly intrigued, didn't deny him outright. Either these people were very gullible, which may explain why the Americans kept them down here, away from anything important, or they knew something that he didn't. Carter expressed her sympathy when Genji arrived at his part in the story: not wanting to participate in the crimes of his family, he had been viciously attacked and left for dead by his brother, who totally cheated. He was rescued by an Overwatch doctor named Angela Ziegler, and valiantly joined the fight against his own clan, eventually dismantling them for good. Perhaps he was exaggerating a few details, but if Hanzo wanted to get his side in, he was welcome to join Overwatch and be sent to rescue crazy ancient Americans.

Genji arrived at an important looking blast door. As he walked in and saw the gigantic ring in the middle of the room, which by this time was already starting to rotate and light up, a variety of expressions flashed across his face, most of which represented some form of surprise and all of which were hidden by his visor.

He contemplated the Major's earlier claims. He turned to her: "So, you are telling me that aliens are real?"

Carter and Teal'c nodded, each feeling a little vindicated at finally changing the ninja's mind.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Before the war, before the hacking and the blackmail and the murder, before Sombra, Olivia Colomar had just been another girl. A girl with a family and relatives and a house. Sometimes, when she was alone, she wished for that old life back, one where she could trust, one where she could love, one where she was loved.

Olivia was dreaming about her family before she woke up. She didn't have many memories of them, she was very young when they were killed in an omnic bombing raid. She did however remember being shown a few pieces of her family history.

She suddenly recalled her grandfather, Alejandro Colomar, and how he had evidently been killed in a failed coup while serving in the American military back in 2004.

This last detail was troubling her because Alejandro Colomar was in fact staring directly at her, confusion dominating his features.

Sombra groaned and blinked several times, wondering if she was seeing a leftover image from a dream. When the face of her grandfather stubbornly refused to go away, she began to wonder if years of questionable cybernetic enhancements had finally begun to catch up with her.

She blinked a few timed, summoning diagnostic information from her various electronic parts. Her translocation system was fried, evidently the beacon had interacted with a temporal anomaly. Her thermoptic camouflage was intact, not that it would do her much good now. The universal hacking tool integrated into her right hand reported as ready, but she would need to test that one out. The abundance of old fashioned machine guns surrounding her suggested that she should probably hold off on that.

She noticed her two planned scapegoats: Genji Shimada and Lena Oxton a few meters from her in the room. There was no way that they didn't know where she was, yet neither of the were looking at her. Sombra began to follow their astonished stares when the gate activated, bathing the room in blue light and setting off a series of ominous rumbles.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

A second talon dropship arrived over the remains of Cheyenne mountain. Reaper and Widomaker had barely stepped out when they heard a loud rumbling coming from beneath the ground. The two looked at each other, and immediately knew that their resident hacker had to be involved. There was nothing that they could do however, the rumbling grew louder before several piles of debris on the mountain appeared to collapse inwards.

"Damn"

Widomaker looked around as Reaper swore. Both knew that the base had collapsed, that was the only thing that could explain the rumbling. She knew that their superiors would be unhappy about the loss of their expert infiltrator, but digging anything out of the base would take months, and there was no way that the American military had failed to notice their base collapsing.

The two agents returned to their dropship to make their report. Neither saw two lightly glowing figures clad in white robes watching them leave.

"So Earth has returned to the stage. Are they ready to face their full reality?" commented the male figure.

"I believe that they are" replied the woman.

 **A/N: Point of clarification, when the SGC evacuated, they took a substantial amount of supplies with them, including Sombra's, Tracer's, and Genji's weapons. I'll try to explain how the earth managed to avoid any more alien encounters after going dark for seventy years in the prologue and in chapter 2.**

 **I am a college student studying engineering. As a result, my schedule is usually packed, so I can't give a good time frame for updates. If I had to take a guess, I'd expect a new chapter every month or so, with an exception around finals.**

 **Also, one final note: I don't think that SG canon ever said what kind of career Cassie was pursuing. I believe that I got the medical doctor idea from** _ **An Extraordinary Journey**_ **by fmfan1980.**


	2. Chapter 2- Such a Mess in Here

**A/N: I'm still waiting on the prologue proofreading. In the meantime, here's another chapter.**

 **If you notice something about the story that could use improvement, feel free to point it out. At this point, I will respond to private messages with private messages, and to reviews in these notes. If I get the same question multiple times as a private message, I will put a general reply in the next chapter's notes.**

 **Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended. The** _ **Stargate**_ **franchise is owned by MGM, while** _ **Overwatch**_ **is owned by Blizzard Entertainment. This story is not officially a part of the** _ **Overwatch**_ **or** _ **Stargate**_ **universes. I am not using this story to earn profit. Finally, I am grateful towards MGM and Blizzard for creating these two wonderful fictional universes, as well as to the wikis for OW and SG for providing me with details for their respective canons.**

Chapter 2

Tracer and Genji emerged from the gate into another underground chamber similar to the one they had just left behind. This one had clearly not been occupied for some time; the only sources of light consisted of the stargate and a multitude of flashlights, which were enough to reveal a coating of dust over the entire room as well as a few cobwebs in the corners. Also, it was cold, they were clearly still underground. Remembering their instructions, they kept moving to make room for other travelers. At that point, they saw their first problem.

There was no power, and 'embarkation room' as the soldiers called it had failsafe blast doors. There was no way that this room could hold everyone, and even if they could physically fit, the ventilation system probably wasn't running, which meant that their oxygen was rapidly depleting.

Genji pondered this for a moment before walking up to the blond woman who appeared to be in charge. She had a slightly panicked expression that suggested that she was new to her position. However, she was directing the room with surprising efficiency, it was clear that most of the people here didn't know her well, but they did respect her. Genji waved towards her, capturing her attention.

"Yes, Mr. Shimada?"

Genji winced, he had never liked formality, it reminded him too much of his father's 'business' meetings. "Please, call me Genji."

"Doctor Weir", Genji bowed while offering his hand in the hybrid greeting that he had come to use when dealing with foreigners, which happened quite often in Overwatch. He was pleased when she returned the gesture perfectly, Genji suspected that she was in fact a diplomat from her skill in communicating with both him and her own staff.

"Has my sword been brought through yet?"

Doctor Weir narrowed her eyes. She liked Genji and Tracer so far, both seemed friendly. But they were clearly talented fighters, and she was reluctant to give them back their weapons so quickly.

"I think that it was, but you have to understand, we don't really know you. We didn't even have time to check your story before we evacuated, so I can't in good conscience give it back to you yet", Weir replied apologetically.

Genji considered her words for a moment. She was right, and if he were in her position, he likely would have been even more suspicious. He needed to convince her. He flipped open a panel in his arm, revealing his supply of shurikens. Doctor Weir looked alarmed.

"Do not be frightened. I am giving these freely to you as a sign of good faith." Dr. Weir still looked skeptical as a nearby soldier collected the projectiles, but Genji could tell that he was getting to her.

"We must escape this room, and the room is too crowded to use explosives or torches to force the door open."

Dr. Weir knew that he was right. But she wasn't sure where he was going with this.

"My sword is able to cut through heavy armor, I may be able to make a hole through the door."

Dr. Weir looked doubtful, but she didn't have a lot of other good options. They might be able to break a hole through the bulletproof (and plasma resistant) glass leading into ops, but they would only have a few seconds to get a team through before a failsafe dropped the blast door. She didn't really have a choice, hopefully Genji's claims about his sword were accurate.

Dr. Weir nodded and motioned for a nearby soldier to hand the cyborg his sword, which he took and immediately inspected for damage. He found a smudge, and shot an annoyed glare towards the man, who took a step back.

Genji approached the left door, which Major Carter had informed him was closer to the generator room. Several soldiers near the door stepped back but continued to watch with curiosity as Genji calmly approached the door.

Genji adopted a battle stance before pulling out a small part of his sword, which at this point was emitting a green glow. Now Major Carter was paying attention, as was almost half of the room. He eyed the door, summoning the dragon spirit that lived within him and channeling it into his sword.

The entire room was watching intently as Genji suddenly shouted "Ryūjin no ken wo kurae!" and pulled out his sword, which was accompanied by what looked like a spectral small green dragon. At the same time, various parts of his body, most notably his eyes, began to glow bright green. The dragon vanished, but the sword continued to glow as Genji quickly made four cuts through the blast door. Once he finished, sensing his audience, he spun his sword twice before replacing it in its sheath. Finally, he turned around and gave a slight bow to his stunned observers.

Tracer chuckled quietly as she continued to help move boxes as they came through the gate. She remembered the first time she saw Genji 'unleash the dragon', as he called it. Neither Winston nor Doctor Zeigler had been able to explain how it had worked, so both had eventually set it aside as a mystery for after the current crisis was resolved. Not that that ever seemed to happen.

Genji lightly tapped the center of the newly cut entrance with his foot, and the rectangular piece of metal fell out the other side with a crash. He calmly returned to the gate and resumed moving material as it came through.

Carter was shocked. When Genji had claimed to be able to summon a spirit dragon, she thought that his family had simply inherited a diluted form of some ability left behind in the human genome by the Ancients. Or that his family had found a piece of alien technology long ago and mistaken it for magic. But she had no explanation for what she had just seen. Or, perhaps more worryingly, how this 'Shimada' clan had evaded the SGC's attention.

"Genji, wait up!", she called after him. She immediately began asking him questions as they worked, he responded as best he could while keeping the smirk etched around his eyes from reaching his voice.

With the path opened, Dr. Weir dispatched two stargate teams and a few technicians to get the generators running. This group had to use explosives and cutting torches to get through the remaining doors; evidently Genji's 'dragon blade' wasn't something that he could repeat quickly.

About twenty minutes later, the last of the SG personnel came through with their third prisoner, the alleged hacker who called herself Sombra. Sombra was walking next to airman Alejandro, which Weir quietly noticed; evidently the guards weren't lying when they claimed that they looked related.

As the last of her people came through, the lights came on, and air started to circulate through the base. Weir hadn't noticed the headache that had slowly been building before she arrived until she got her first breath of freshly recycled air and it began to vanish. Their most immediate problem solved, it was time to figure out what had happened.

"SG1, Tracer, Genji, please report to ops", Walter's voice sounded out over the intercom. The power failure was the only thing immediately wrong with the base, once the generators had been refueled, everything else seems to wake up. At least, everything that they had access to: the base was huge, its original intent was to be a major evacuation center in the event of a catastrophe on earth.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Sombra was impatiently waiting for her impossibly young Grandfather lookalike to go away. He wasn't authorized to tell her anything, which meant that the chances of her carrying on a conversation were pretty much nil. Eventually, he gave up on trying to solve the mystery of their appearance and moved on to another task, leaving her in a reasonably sized cell.

The moment he rounded the corner, Sombra set to work. The electronic lock was easy enough to hack, it turned out that her remote access tool was still working. After a few additional minutes, she opened the mechanical lock, left the room, and walked off to figure out where exactly she was.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Some faint shouting, followed by a slightly louder crash echoed through the hallways to reach the ears of Vala Mal Doran. Her partner, a significantly less attractive and intelligent brute of a man who simply called himself Codge immediately went pale. Vala rolled her eyes, she knew what he was thinking: the Tau'ri had returned and were going to kill them for being in their base. Vala was above such superstition.

Somewhere between seventy and eighty years ago, the Tau'ri had emerged onto the galactic stage. They had achieved some admittedly impressive victories after managing to blow up Ra's mothership with a primitive nuke. In a way, Vala even owed them her freedom; Quetesh never would have been caught by the Tok'ra had she not been fleeing a horde of angry villagers armed with Tau'ri supplied weapons. Vala supposed that she should be grateful; the Tok'ra had pulled that snake out of her head and had even let her be the one to crush it. Which she did gleefully. But she had never been the type of girl to get all bent out of shape about who owed who what, unless it was somebody who owed her money, so she hadn't felt too bad about joining with this band of thugs who had commandeered their abandoned base.

Quetesh had encountered the Tau'ri, so Vala knew better than to believe the legends. They were not seven feet tall, nor did they have magical powers, and they certainly didn't have an armada of powerful warships capable of blowing up suns. And the Asgard had not begged them for help with the replicators, they had politely asked.

About half an hour after hearing the noise, Vala had to admit that something was wrong as the base's electrical systems powered on. Someone had moved back in, but it couldn't be the Tau'ri, the last she had heard, there had been a coup on their home world which had resulted in their only gate being destroyed. Vala tensed as she heard someone approaching. Codge followed her example and drew his knife.

Sombra saw two people, one of them an attractive white woman dressed in tight fitting leather armor. She had probably tensed after hearing her accidentally brush against the wall a few meters back. Her companion, a squat, strong, minion-y looking man with an even paler complexion didn't look much smarter than your average grunt. Neither should have been hard to avoid.

"What is it?" Codge was still afraid. Vala would have laughed, but she had definitely heard something, and it was getting closer.

"I'm not sure… gotcha!" Vala lashed out and grabbed Sombra's arm as she attempted to slip by. Codge, startled by the sudden appearance of a strange, purple clad woman out of nowhere, panicked and lashed out with his knife.

"AAAHHHHHH!" The woman cried out in pain before letting out a string of curses in her native language that Vala's translator quickly processed for her.

"Codge!" Vala hissed, not wanting to attract attention. Vala didn't exactly feel bad about the woman being injured, but she had been in enough fights to know the risks of having an armed, unstable partner at your back. Also, if whoever was challenging them for the base could become invisible, Vala didn't want to risk starting a fight at the moment.

Codge didn't respond. Still spooked, he tried to run down the corridor. At that moment, the familiar sound of a staff weapon shot out of a hallway as he tried to pass it, and the single most infamous Jaffa in the last four millennia of galactic history emerged.

Now Vala was worried. Teal'c had slain more Go'auld than most mid-level System Lords, and was a well-known member of the Tau'ri flagship team, SG1. So, the Tau'ri were back after all. Vala knew that trying to fight her way out of this would never work, so she tried a different approach.

"Um, Hello there" She said cheerily. Teal'c's face didn't change. Four other people came up behind him, all with concern evident on their faces, except for one… person who was wearing a complete face visor.

"Surrender, and you will not be harmed." The infamous Jaffa was not going to be seduced or bribed. Vala was out of options, so she complied.

"She looks badly hurt", said one of the women, a tiny brunette with a strange glowing device attached to her chest, with concern evident in her tone and eyes.

"We need to get her back to the infirmary", stated Major Samantha Carter. Every Go'auld knew the members of SG1 almost as well as they knew their most trusted lieutenants. At least, the smart ones did. Quetesh had not been a fool.

"What will we do with her?" Asked the robot, it must have been a robot, to the Major.

"We'll take her to holding until we can figure out what's going on here.", replied Carter almost instantly.

Teal'c picked up the strange woman, who was now beginning to turn pale, and applied pressure to the deep stab wound into her abdomen as he and the entire team turned around to get back to the occupied part of the base. Major Carter led the way, and the guns held on her by Dr. Jackson and the brunette led Vala to follow suit.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Shortly after dispatching several scouting teams, Dr. Weir found a message waiting in the commander's office. It wasn't encrypted, so she opened it.

"To whoever finds this message, this is Colonel Thomas Payne, commander of the Alpha site. It has been several months since we received the quarantine message from earth. All attempts to clarify via wormhole have failed; the stargate connects, but we have not been able to get a response."

Dr. Weir felt a stab of guilt. Not only had her entire planet gone through a war while she had been safe inside the mountain, all their off-world teams had been stranded. Both ex-Overwatch agents had indicated that there had been some kind of coup attempt against the American government about when the SGC had been frozen, but evidently neither of their educations had considered it anything more than a minor historical footnote. She continued to play the recording.

"I have contacted the other off world site commanders; it seems that all off-world teams have been accounted for, at least, the ones that we know about. Since we are to assume that we are on our own for the foreseeable future, we have decided to relocate all Earth personnel to the Gamma site."

This was good, she would be able to establish contact and explain their situation. As the Colonel signed off, Weir took a moment to wonder who exactly they would be contacting. Surely almost everyone from the command staff was dead by this point. If anything was left, it would have to be their descendants, one could argue that she was essentially about to make contact with new culture, one with few if any ties back to Earth.

Well, new cultures didn't contact themselves. Weir quickly announced that they had discovered where the Alpha site inhabitants had gone, and that they were going to attempt to contact them within twenty minutes. She also summoned her flagship team, as well as the two ex-agents; after all, having a few famous faces might make contact easier.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Sombra woke up feeling strangely numb. Under normal circumstances, she might have panicked, or tried to break out, but whatever they had given her was some strong stuff. Sombra looked around and found the frowning face of the blond woman who had helped to rescue her.

"I don't believe that we've met", began the woman. "I'm Major Samantha Carter, United States Air Force."

Sombra looked at her skeptically. Whatever uniform she was wearing, it was not the American Air Force's. Although, there were a few similarities.

Sombra tried to sit up. At that point, her stab injury loudly announced its presence.

Carter's face softened slightly. "I wouldn't try to move around too much. The nurse said that you were pretty badly injured. A few inches deeper, and you might never have woken up."

Sombra couldn't argue with that. She let herself drift back onto the bed. Carter continued.

"You escaped and wandered into an unsecured part of the base."

Sombra replied, "Well, I wasn't going to just sit around with no information."

Sam blinked, remembering that she had not been told anything. She had barely woken up when she had gone through the stargate and had been immediately moved into a holding cell. She decided to fill her in.

"You evacuated out base with us through an alien device we call the Stargate. We are currently on an off-world base called the Alpha site."

Sombra had mastered the art of wringing information out of people who didn't want to give it up years ago. It was unusual, but not unheard of, for someone to offer it to her freely. She considered that the woman might be lying, but she would know if she did. Sombra's eyes widened as she realized that Major Carter was telling the truth. She wanted to interrupt, but instead decided to let the Major continue.

"Your friends told us that we had been in a time dilation field for the past seventy years. We believe that it was activated during a coup in our home country, and that your attempt to teleport inside disabled it."

Now Sombra was starting to feel excited. Most people thought of the 2004 attempted takeover of the Russian, Chinese, British, and American governments as nothing more than a case of a few _locos_ who had wormed their way into just enough power to get swallowed by bigger fish. Sombra had known for a long time that there was more to it; it was far too easily defeated, almost as if the world leaders had been secondary targets, with the real fight going on somewhere else. Sombra had looked a little further, and that was where the security got serious; all she had been able to figure out was that the mysterious organization that she had been hunting had been involved.

Sometimes, it was best to give a little information to get a lot. Sombra sensed that the Major wasn't going to fall for her usual tactics of threats and charm, so she decided to take a more direct approach.

"I was knocked out when I translocated into your base. I don't suppose that you can tell me more about this 'time dilation device' of yours?", Sombra probed.

Carter looked torn; far too many of her attempts to explain alien technology went over her reluctantly listening teammates heads; even Daniel's eyes glazed over whenever she started to get beyond undergraduate physics. But they couldn't trust Sombra yet, she hadn't even given them her real name. Carter came to a decision.

"I'm afraid that technical details on that device are classified."

Sombra didn't respond. Classified was a phrase that she usually took as a challenge rather than a dead end, but she had already tried and failed to find her way into the files describing project Blue Book. She decided to see what Major Carter would give up freely.

"So what can you tell me?"

"I can tell you that we want information on what we missed. The two people that you were found with were able to give us a basic outline of the last seventy years, but I suspect that you can give us a few more details."

Sombra was about to respond that she didn't give away information for free when the intercom came to life, calling Major Carter away, leaving her with only a few preoccupied nurses for company. Also, whatever they had given was starting to wear off, and she was becoming more aware of the injury in her side.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

The three members of SG1 and the two ex-agents of Overwatch assembled inside a meeting room near what had become Dr. Weir's office. Weir filled them in on what she had found: where the alpha site personnel had gone. SG1 responded with their own piece of news.

"We are not alone in this base.", began Teal'c.

"We don't know how the galaxy may have changed in the past seventy years", continued Dr. Jackson. "We don't know if they will be friendly or hostile towards us. From their point of view, Earth just cut their ancestors loose without warning."

Carter finished the team's thought, "We need to secure the base before risking a first contact."

Dr. Weir agreed. After asking her team for suggestions on how to do just that, Genji offered his own input.

"Doctor Weir, I wish to help you in your task."

Tracer quickly offered her own support. Together, they began to form a plan.

Major Carter, Tracer, Genji, and two other marines would search for the invader's quarters. Simultaneously, ten other teams would flush out the tunnels. Teal'c would interrogate the prisoner and attempt to find out any information that could help them to repel the squatters. Dr. Jackson would provide support to Teal'c while he attempted to extract information.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Genji watched another invader enter their base of operations: Major Carter had identified it as an auxiliary command center near one of the surface exits. At this point, they had determined that the invaders were in fact pirates, evidently this 'Alpha Site' was close enough to several mining and farming outposts on nearby worlds to act as a hideout. The pirate leader, whom their conversation had revealed to be someone named Koden, believed that the 'Tau'ri', which Genji discovered to be slang for people from Earth, were unlikely to return after their home world had mysteriously gone into isolation. It was time to show them otherwise.

Genji received a signal along with the marine behind him. They had split off from Major Carter, Tracer, and a second Marine to launch a simultaneous attack on the room from two sides, Overwatch had often employed the same tactic when attacking small Talon bases.

The marines on either side of the room tossed in flashbangs. A moment later, Genji and Tracer zipped inside. Genji targeted a man who he assumed to be Koden from the elevated platform he was sitting on. A few precise jabs left him unconscious; Dr. Weir had been adamant about avoiding killing if the targets could by safely neutralized, which had visibly impressed Tracer.

Tracer also practically flew into the room. Her pulse pistols had been set to reduced power, which allowed her to quickly blink up to a few of the temporarily blinded guards and hit them with enough pulse energy to knock them out for about half an hour. Behind both agents, the remainder of the strike team emerged, firing zat guns into the numerous remaining targets. The entire fight was over in less than a minute, with no injuries on either side.

Even if Koden had time to call for help, he would have only heard the confused shouting of the remainder of his barely organized band of thugs being taken apart with the quick and precise tactics that the SGC personnel prided themselves on.

As several support personnel arrived to help SG1 restrain the prisoners, Tracer couldn't resist lightly teasing a few of the pirates who were beginning to wake up: "Looks like there won't be any any do-overs for you!" Genji didn't visibly react, but Tracer could tell that he was rolling his eyes after another one of her infamous one liners. Major Carter and both marines chuckled quietly.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Vala was bored: the interrogation room that the handsome alien soldier had left her in had no interesting features, just a two way mirror, a light, a table, a chair, a primitive recording device, and six concrete surfaces. Worse, she had been rudely handcuffed to the table rather tightly after almost slipping out of the young man's grip. Vala grinned at the memory of her captor trying to keep a serious face after she had tried to distract him with a few suggestive glances after walking close enough to try to get his access card. She had almost succeeded, but evidently Tau'ri soldiers were harder to fool than half drunk pirates.

The door opened, and a tall, dangerous looking Jaffa walked in. Vala probably would have recognized him even if she hadn't had bits of Quetesh's memories in her head, he had quite a large bounty on his head, not that she had ever been willing to risk trying to collect it.

The man took a seat across from Vala. She did her best to look pretty as she began trying to charm her way out of her predicament, "So… muscles." Teal'c's expression may as well have been set in stone.

"We should start with finding out how many other invaders there are", suggested Dr. Jackson wirelessly into Tealc's ear.

"How many of you are present in this facility?", he asked, a dangerous tone coloring his voice.

"Invaders? I'm not sure who you're talking about. I was just here for a picnic with my boyfriend." Vala replied as she instantly slipped into a disturbingly convincing façade of innocence.

Teal'c wasn't fooled. He put on a dark expression and leaned forward slightly, turning his infamous glare, which had drawn detailed plans out of hardened spies with ease, towards the woman.

Vala didn't flinch, maintaining her confused, innocent look perfectly. After a minute, Teal'c leaned back, keeping his gaze on the woman. Secretly, he was impressed, and knew that they weren't going to get anything out of her.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

After restraining the pirates, Carter looked around the room, looking for the exit to the surface. She found it and removed the lock that the pirates had placed on it. Genji and Tracer, both finished with their task of restraining the remaining pirates, curiously followed her through the backlit tunnel on the other side.

A few meters led the three Terrans to the surface. Genji and Tracer both stopped and looked with curiosity at the large silver, vaguely pyramid shaped object that sat a few away.

"What's that?", asked Tracer. Today had been just full of surprises for her, and she found herself beginning to enjoy them.

"That, is an Al'kesh", said a clearly intrigued Major Carter.

The three cautiously approached the ship. The lock on the inside of the door suggested that only the pirate leader had open access to the ship, which was confirmed when the three found it empty. Fortunately, a quick inspection of its systems revealed it to be mostly intact. Major Carter contacted Dr. Weir over her radio. "Doctor Weir, we've found something."

"What is it?" the cautiously optimistic voice of the base leader replied.

"An intact Al'kesh, probably what the pirates were using to raid nearby settlements."

Doctor Weir responded with the anticipated orders to be careful and to secure the ship. Upon further inspection, Genji found a vaguely familiar looking device, one that appeared to be made of gold and gems and was meant to be worn on one's hand. Narrowing his eyes in suspicion, he called over Major Carter.

"Yes?", she replied as she walked into the room occupied by Genji.

"This device looks somewhat similar to something that I encountered several years ago. What is its purpose?"

Carter inspected the device. "This is a Go'auld healing device." She paused, a thought occurring to her. "We could use this to help that woman you were pursuing, she was pretty badly injured.

Genji looked suspiciously at the device. "That is not what the device that I saw was used for."

Carter looked at him in confusion, then it dawned on her. "You must have found a hand device, the Go'auld call them kara'keshes. They may look a bit similar, but they operate on completely different principles."

Genji reluctantly nodded his head towards the Major, then continued onto a different room.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Sombra waited for the nurse to go around a corner before she quickly swiveled her legs and got out of her bed. Ignoring the sudden pain in her side, she activated her thermoptic camouflage and began to make her way towards the infirmary exit. The nurse, who had only been making some notes on a nearby chart, quickly reappeared and was visibly shocked to find the bed empty.

Wheels began turning in her head: the doctor's assessment of the strange woman's injury had been more severe than the medic who had first treated her had reported. They had successfully repaired the wound with surgery, but if she was walking around, the stitches were likely to come out, and that could be fatal. Before she could react, there was a clattering sound from one of the nearby exits.

Sombra grunted as she ran into a fast-moving nurse on his way into the infirmary. Her camouflage flickered out as the system went offline; it relied off extremely precise scans of her body and what she was carrying to work, any significant disruption would disable the system for several seconds as it recharged and rescanned her body, she had never been able to fully overcome that limitation.

Not taking any time to mope about her misfortune, Sombra quickly identified a sharp knife on a nearby table, grabbed it, and held it to the second nurse's neck as the rest of the room turned to look at her, one of the more cool-headed guards activating an alarm.

"Nobody move! Just let me go and no one has to get hurt, _comprende?_ ", Sombra shouted, masking a slight feeling of panic as the rest of the room complied.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

"Security to the infirmary. Repeat, Security to the infirmary.", Walter's professionally calm voice clued the returning strike team as to the cause of the alarm. Luckily, they had already been going there, and could get there in about a minute.

Tracer had been concerned about Sombra. She had tried to convince the base commander that she was still dangerous, even if she was injured. Dr. Weir had been partially convinced, and had instructed a guard to watch her at all times, but she had wanted to keep the option of eventually recruiting her open. Tracer had tried to argue her case further, with Genji firmly putting his support behind her, but it wasn't enough. Dr. Weir just hadn't seen the kind of chaos and pain that Talon was capable of inflicting.

Tracer hoped that Dr. Weir wouldn't have to experience just how wrong she had been. As she and Genji raced ahead towards the infirmary, Major Carter and the two marines following close behind.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

"Sombra, put the knife down, we can talk about this!", pleaded Tracer as she arrived in the corridor about ten feet from the hacker.

Sombra glanced at Tracer. "Yeah right, we both know that you'll be on me the instant I let him go."

"Sombra, you are surrounded, outnumbered, and injured, you cannot win this.", Genji, tried, arriving a few moments after Tracer.

Sombra wasn't fooled. Overwatch may have claimed to be an upstanding force for good, but she had known the truth even before she met Moira or Reaper. They pretended to be concerned about morals and ethics and lives and whatnot but would always look away as their secret agents ruthlessly dealt with any perceived threat. The only difference between them and Talon was that Talon didn't pretend to be something else.

Sombra began to move away from the infirmary and the Overwatch agents, neither of them willing to follow out of fear that she would cut her hostage's throat. Smart move. She was about to go around a corner when another familiar voice spoke up.

"Sombra, you're injured, and have nowhere to go. Just drop the weapon, I swear that we won't hurt you." Major Carter. Sombra rarely encountered people who really believed their own _mamadas_ about trust and loyalty and all that other nonsense. She preferred to avoid them, they were tough to manipulate, and frankly kind of boring. However, at the moment, she was a little short on options.

Carter was at least partially right, she didn't know the base. A few subtle probes into a nearby laptop had revealed earlier that their computer system had some solid security. In fact, Sombra could have sworn that some of the code seemed almost alien. She would have appreciated the challenge had she been back at her base, one could only tear through so many of those crappy firewalls at Lumérico before she went insane from boredom. But for now, it meant that she wouldn't be able to gain access to any schematics before the Overwatch agents caught up with her.

Sombra was considering her options when a fourth voice chimed in, "I know that you have no reason to trust us, so just let us talk, I'm sure that we can learn to understand each other."

Sombra hadn't spoken to Dr. Jackson yet, only observing a few interactions with other lightly wounded people in the infirmary and listening to comments made by her caretakers. She had gathered that he was a lot like that gorilla scientist that had chased Reaper out of Gibraltar and crushed her hacking device. Sombra was beginning to reevaluate that conclusion, Winston's only known hostage negotiation had ended with him throwing the culprits through a wall, Jackson seemed to be more reasonable.

Sombra really didn't have any good options. If she was just talking to Overwatch, she probably would have risked it. She didn't want to wind up in the clutches of whatever nightmare had succeeded Blackwatch in the 'reformed' Overwatch. But she didn't have to surrender to Overwatch.

Carter believed herself when she claimed that she wouldn't be harmed, and she clearly wasn't some oblivious grunt kept in the dark by the boss. Jackson didn't have as much authority, but Sombra could tell that he fully intended to try to talk her back into her bed, with no hard feelings on either side. Had she not been in such a desperate situation, she would have been amused.

"One condition, those two don't come near me", Sombra pointed to the two ex-agents, who both glared at her. Oh yeah, the British chick was still harboring a grudge.

"You've got it, just drop the knife." Carter replied, motioning for the two ex-agents to step back, which they did. Sombra was impressed, Tracer hated her guts, and Blackwatch agents had always been willing to ignore the rules to achieve their ends. Controlling either took some skill.

Sombra dropped the knife. The nurse immediately ran towards his comrades, who briefly parted to let him pass, not taking their eyes off the hacker. Sombra began to calm down as Tracer and Genji honored the agreement by backing up even further as she began to walk towards Major Carter. That was a mistake; as her adrenaline wore off, Sombra realized just how badly she had torn her stitches as she collapsed, a pool of blood starting to form on the floor.

Sombra saw Carter approach her with a strange device on her hand. She must have been wrong, she thought, slowly slipping into unconsciousness. She had been an idiot; she had trusted someone, with her life nonetheless, and now she was about to pay for it. Sombra tried to shoot a defiant look at Carter as she drifted into darkness.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Major Carter looked at their third prisoner from the SGC. She briefly made eye contact, a last flare of defiance making its way onto her features before she fell unconscious. Wow, she had some trust issues. Major Carter looked at her wound; it was bleeding, she must have torn her stitches during her ill-advised escape. Major Carter had met people like her before, she had sometimes wondered at what it must have been like to live like that, without a team or a family she could trust.

She felt sorry for the strange woman as she put on the healing device and activated it. She could see why Tracer and Genji didn't like her. Nevertheless, she had surrendered. She could have slit the nurse's throat as soon as she had gotten the knife and ran into the tunnels, buying enough time to re-engage her cloak, but she hadn't. She clearly didn't trust the Overwatch agents, but she had been willing to negotiate with her, and she had released that nurse without hurting him.

Carter sighed as she finished closing the woman's wound. Dr. Weir was right; as far as they knew, they were alone. Earth was cut off, and all their off-world personnel were either dead or incredibly old. They had no idea what was going on in the galaxy, and they didn't have the resources to guard her indefinitely. The pirates could simply be marooned; they knew a few worlds with broken stargates that should keep from reporting their reemergence for a long time, but Sombra had really just been curious about their base and had been swept up in a series of accidents and misunderstandings. It wouldn't be right to toss her out, especially when she didn't have anyone to watch her back, or when she had up to date information on Earth that could wind up in the hands of a hostile race.

Major Carter turned to look at Dr. Jackson, who returned an understanding glance. Earth seventy years into the future would have a significantly different culture, and if anyone was going to make peace with another culture, it was him. Both would have to work together to gain Sombra's trust.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

The characteristic blast of energy shot out of the gate as the dialing sequence completed. Doctor Weir waited a moment for it to settle before handing the microphone to Dr. Jackson.

As base commander, Dr. Weir would normally be the one to start talking to an unknown culture through the gate. However, this was not a normal first contact. These were possibly the descendants of their friends and comrades from the SGC. The theory was that the minor celebrity status that Dr. Jackson had attained inside of the SGC accompanied with his expertise in dealing with new cultures would minimize the chances of first re-contact going south.

"Hello, this is Doctor Daniel Jackson representing the Earth base Alpha." The Alpha Site had originally been quickly built as a temporary evacuation point, creative naming had not been a priority.

The radio was silent for about a half a minute. Everyone present was beginning to fear the worst when a response finally came, "I'm sorry, did you say Earth?"

Doctor Jackson was about to respond when a second reply came through, "wait, did you say Doctor Daniel Jackson?"

"That's correct, who am I speaking with?", Dr. Jackson knew the benefits of getting to know the specific person one was talking to when contacting a new culture.

"I'm sorry, let me patch you through."

Ops was filled with silence for several minutes. During this time, Tracer and Genji walked in, having been summoned by Dr. Weir to provide some insight into what had happened on Earth over the previous seventy years.

"This is Admiral Thor speaking to the individual claiming to be Doctor Daniel Jackson. When the SGC was trapped in a time dilation bubble, they had an identification code used to communicate with the Asgard High Command, please transmit that code to verify your identity."

Dr. Weir and Dr. Jackson both looked at Walter, who had of course already retrieved the device. After a nod from Dr. Weir, he transmitted them. A moment passed, then Thor responded.

"Greetings Doctor Jackson, it is good to hear from you again. I apologize for my skepticism; we believed that humanity did not have the technology necessary to shut down the time dilation field."

Tracer was surprised. An alien named Thor? She began to wonder if this entire thing really was someone pulling her leg. Ancient Americans exploring space through an alien ring? Maybe. Strange plasma and ranged electrostatic weapons? Possible, although Winston would really want to take a look at one of those 'zat' guns if she got ever back to Earth. Alien ships with strange pictures that looked kind of like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and powerful healing technology? Eh, that was on the edge of what she could believe, although Doc Z would probably want to run some thorough brain scans when she told her about that healing device. Aliens named after Norse gods? Now this entire thing was starting to sound a bit dodgy.

Tracer looked at Dr. Weir, about to ask her if there was really an alien named Thor. She was Genji and knew that he was thinking the same thing. Both saw the reactionary expression on the base commander's face and decided to hold off.

"We think that somebody accidentally disabled it by trying to transport inside. She was recently injured and is unable to speak, but we do have two people here who may be able to provide more information."

Dr. Jackson looked at the ex-Overwatch agents. Tracer was stunned: only about eight hours ago, she had only been trying to catch a Talon hacker. Since then, her world had been turned upside down and left behind: aliens were real, and America (and Britain, as she had found out with a few questions about her homeland's role) had been interacting with them since the 1990s! On top of all of that, now there was an alien named after an ancient god of thunder. Along with the suspiciously familiar writing in that alien ship, Tracer was starting to feel a bit knackered.

Genji saw her hesitation, and responded the oddly named alien, "That is correct. Myself and a friend were pursuing a dangerous criminal while she was investigating their base on Earth. She has the ability to teleport to a portable beacon using technology that she stole from our organization several years ago."

The SGC personnel in the room looked surprised at that revelation. Genji ignored them and continued.

"We were about to capture her when she teleported inside and was incapacitated. We followed her into the base to complete our mission and were captured ourselves. Shortly after, the base began to collapse, and we fled through the gate."

Thor was surprised. "I am surprised that your world's technology was able to overcome the effects of the time dilation device. I believe that we have once again underestimated your ingenuity."

This last remark earned a snort from Doctor Jackson and a look of pride from Tracer and Genji. After all, Winston had designed Tracer's chronal accelerator technology and had played a role in designing Genji's precision cybernetics. Truth be told, most of the agents of Overwatch owed him gratitude for some part of their technological tools; even Jesse had had to thank the scientist when he helped him to design a high precision prosthetic arm after the Kings Row attack.

"You have most likely contacted this location in search of your fellow humans. They are indeed here, or at least, their descendants are. There is much for you to catch up on, so we are requesting that you send a delegation so that we may exchange our stories in detail."

Surprised, Doctor Jackson agreed after a nod from Weir confirmed their response. The SGC personnel were feeling hopeful; their colleague's descendants had evidently survived, and were willing to talk to them.

After some discussion, Doctor Weir decided that the contact team would consist of Doctor Jackson, Major Carter, Tracer, Genji, Sombra, and several marines and assistants. She would remain behind to continue to revive the base.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Sombra began to wake up, she felt groggy, but no pain. Confused, she moved her hands over to where her stab wound had been. There was nothing but smooth, unblemished skin. Now she was alarmed, even if she had somehow dreamed up the entire stabbing incident, she should have a scar there from a childhood fight. Sombra started to look around before landing on the concerned looking face of Dr. Jackson.

She bolted upwards, surprising herself again. Even with Doctor Zeigler's legendary biotic technology, a wound like that would have taken dayss to fully heal, and still would have left a scar. She poked the area again tentatively. Nothing.

"What did you do to me?" A note of panic seeped into her voice despite her best efforts at control.

"You were dying, Major Carter used a healing device on you invented by a race called the Go'auld."

Sombra was suspicious, why would an alien race make such a power healing device to work so well on humans? And why would they use it on her? A wave of her hand brought up a visual of her internal clock, which indicated that she had only been out for a few hours; and besides, several days of lying still would have left her with a lot of aches and pains, biotic technology or not. Also, the operating systems of her cybernetic components had been designed to integrate directly into her brain, tampering with them in a fundamental level would require them to be able to literally erase and reprogram her mind.

Sombra didn't think that they would do that, and even if they could, they probably would have also programmed her to not think that they had. Which she didn't. Crap.

Sombra was brought out of her developing existential crisis by the voice of Dr. Jackson, "We have contacted the descendants of our off-world teams. They invited us to send a delegation to discuss the changes that happened over the past seventy years, and Doctor Weir wants you to go."

Sombra was surprised, why would they want to send her? She had taken a hostage and tried to escape, and that was on top of her breaking into the base in the first place, even if doing so had technically freed them from a seventy year-long imprisonment at significant risk to herself. This didn't make sense. Maybe they were experimenting on her, trying to see if she would accept obviously untrue statements from them. But it wasn't working, so they had clearly done something wrong. What else had they messed up in her brain? Was she vulnerable to crashing now, like a piece of defective hardware? Was this how one of Moira's experiments felt?

Sombra was beginning to reevaluate her opinions of the Talon geneticist's ethically questionable projects when Dr. Jackson rescued her again with an explanation.

"One of our alien allies was intrigued to hear that you managed to disable the time dilation device holding us prisoner. He wants to meet you and ask about your technology."

Aliens. Of course. Sombra had always dismissed aliens as one of the easy explanations that lesser hackers and conspiracy theorists invented to explain some of the tougher inconsistencies in the workings of the world. Sombra knew the truth; whoever was really in charge was a mere human. Or Omnic. In either case, they were fallible, which meant that she would eventually beat them.

But aliens. Sombra shook her head. She knew that she was no longer on Earth. Her implants had been unable to connect to any of the GPS satellites that she used to track her own location. If her access were being blocked, then she wouldn't detect the background radio noise constantly arriving from space.

Sombra came to a decision. If the mysterious Americans had messed with her brain, then she really didn't have a choice, and if they didn't, she needed to seize any opportunity to get more information. Clearly, there was a substantial amount of history that she was painfully unaware of at play. Also, if she really had been healed, then these Americans might be worth cozying up to. Might. She nodded.

Dr. Jackson smiled, stood up, and offered a hand. He could see that Sombra was having difficulty believing him, perhaps the details about the Asgard's interactions with Earth could be left as a surprise for later.

Deciding that it was better for now to play nice, Sombra accepted his help in standing up. She accepted a set of clothes, no weapons included, and walked off to prepare for her first interplanetary research mission.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

The delegation began to assemble about an hour later in the Gate room. Using both her years of diplomatic experience and her common sense, Doctor Weir guessed that it would be best to address the conflict between the two ex-Overwatch agents and Sombra before they went on the mission. She called them into the conference room. Within minutes, all three of them arrived, the ex-agents glaring at the hacker, who pointedly didn't look back at them.

Weir looked at all three of them sequentially. To her relief, Sombra returned her look with a neutral expression on her face.

"As I understand, there is a substantial amount of animosity between your two organizations. I understand that it cannot be resolved in a day, but I would like to ensure that it doesn't interfere with this mission."

Tracer was the first to respond, an indignant tone telling the room exactly how she felt about Sombra's participation. "Why is she even coming with us? She's a criminal; her 'organization' as you call it has been murdering people and starting conflicts for years. In fact, she only went into your base to try to break into whatever secrets were buried there!"

Normally, Sombra wouldn't have cared what the peppy Overwatch agent thought of her. She was just a naïve 'foolish girl', as her blue skinned colleague had put it. Sombra doubted that she knew half of what her precious 'Overwatch' had really done. Genji was a bit savvier, she realized, and stayed silent. Sombra couldn't tell what he was thinking.

Sombra would never admit to feeling a twinge as Tracer tore her apart in front of the base commander. These people had been almost like a dream come true: competent fighters that weren't also total psychopaths, much better info, a willingness to give out that info, and they could be bothered to secure their own computers. In all honesty, Sombra was starting to wonder if she should stick with them. These people had obviously accepted outside parties before, but they seemed to take loyalty seriously. Sombra didn't. She was beginning to wonder if she could possibly convince them that she was worth keeping around when Doctor Weir turned to her.

"I assume that you have a perspective that you would like to share."

Sombra was surprised, she thought that Doctor Weir would be shocked and appalled after hearing her history, but if she was, it didn't show. _Carajo_ , she was good. Sombra knew that Tracer was right, had she gotten her way, she would have been in and out of the base with her intel, none of them any the wiser. She was definitely a criminal; and the only people who thought of Talon as the 'good guys' were the _locos_ who ran it.

Despite her being right, Sombra was really starting to get sick of that righteous chip that Tracer had out of her shoulder, exactly who was it that she thought that she worked for. Motivated more than she should have been by her emotions, Sombra turned to her and responded.

"And what about you? Overwatch and anything like it are clearly banned by the Petraeus act. Yet here you are, running missions to save the world on your own terms, meting out justice to those who 'deserve it", Sombra sounded sarcastic as she described what Tracer was doing. Before Tracer could respond, she continued.

"And even when Overwatch was still legal, who did you think you were working for? Do you think that Rialto was really the first time that Blackwatch assassinated someone for 'the greater good'? As for you personally, what was your body count after the King's Row uprising? How about after the attack in Numbani?"

Tracer was stunned. She had told herself that the people she'd killed on those missions had been terrorists and criminals. If she hadn't done it, innocent people would have died. Nevertheless, Tracer hadn't slept right for months after the King's Row mission. Doc Zeigler had chalked it up to standard rookie queasiness, but Tracer had never told them about the one incident that haunted her dreams for years.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

 _ **Kings Row, England, Seven Years ago**_

Tracer was having fun. She let out another taunt as a pulse bomb destroyed an eradicator and several slicers before blinking into an alley to avoid some retaliatory fire from some nearby troopers. She had just reloaded her pistols and was preparing to rejoin her team on the bomb when she suddenly noticed that she wasn't alone.

Tracer turned and looked down the alley. A null trooper looked back at her. Acting on her training, Tracer began to blink towards it as it did lower its weapons slightly.

Whatever it was doing, it was too slow, a clip from her pistols into the Omnic's body ensured that it would never terrorize anyone again. Unfortunately, its vocal processor had been left intact.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!", the trooper screamed in an electronic voice, before using some of its rapidly depleting energy reserved to move its single eye to look at the Overwatch agent. he looked back, confused.

"I… I surrend…" The trooper's voice died as the remains of her power vanished through a hole in one of her central conduits. She had never wanted to do battle, she had joined Null Sector back when they were just a protest group, seeking rights for Omnics in one of the most oppressive places on Earth. She had been unable to leave once they started to become violent, not without risking them investigating and discovering her human friend living in Liverpool. Instead, she had quietly accepted the reconfiguration into a trooper, and had resolved to try to stay out of the battle as much as possible until it was over. Not that any of that mattered now, she was too badly damaged, even the repair stations back in the European Omnium wouldn't be able to stop her from crashing forever. She looked back towards her killer; the famous test pilot.

"I understand", was her last thought before she suffered a fatal system error.

Tracer was confused, what had the trooper been doing? Omnics did as they were programmed, and troopers were programmed to kill people, everyone knew that. She would have thought about it more, but the characteristic war cry of a bastion entering its assault mode grabbed her attention. "My team", she thought before she dashed out of the alley, leaving the remains of OE-375 in the alley, never to be identified before they were unceremoniously sent to recycling by the cleanup crews several days later.

Tracer returned to the bomb and destroyed the already weakened bastion with a pulse bomb. Eventually, she and her team broke into the power station, killed the OR-14s and freeing the hostages. But that one trooper stuck in the mind, silently judging her.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Tracer was stunned, her normally cheerful personality unable to formulate a good response to the Talon agent's attack. Wanting to defend his friend, and his organization, Genji spoke up.

"We did what we had to do to keep the world safe.", he began. Moira's betrayal was no secret to Overwatch, Genji knew that Sombra knew about his former affiliations. "We did not set out to assassinate Antonio, and while I do not defend his actions, Commander Reyes only killed him when he came to believe that we would be unable to hold onto him.

"Gotcha", Sombra thought. Obviously, she did not have a lot of experience debating the relative morality of Overwatch and Talon, she had honestly never expected to find herself talking to Genji or Tracer as anything other than a prisoner or an interrogator. But now she was on a roll, and she was still frustrated at their naiveite, and she wasn't going to let them blind Dr. Weir with their tales of heroism and glory as they had the rest of the world. Where did that thought come from?

"Do you really think that? You were just going in to catch some Talon businessman? What, did you think that he was the only one responsible for the attack on your base? He was dead the moment you stepped off the plane. Talon needed a scapegoat, and he was starting to get a little too sloppy, so he was set up to take the fall."

"Antonio had connections with powerful people across the world. We would not have been able to keep him prisoner."

Doctor Weir sympathized with that argument. She had only recently become aware of the Trust before the attack, but even before the SGC, she had seen far too many people escape justice courtesy of their powerful friends. Nevertheless, she was acting as a mediator, and she couldn't take sides.

"Please, Antonio was sloppy. You had access to his personal office, and you found talon troopers following his orders. You could have easily taken a dozen incriminating documents when you took him, and a close childhood friendship with every leader on Earth wouldn't have saved him. Reyes was out for blood, he never intended to take any prisoners."

Genji didn't respond immediately. Overwatch had taught him not to question his commanding officer's decisions; it was easy to pick apart a decision made in the heat of the moment when one was in relative safety and had all the facts. Genji had followed this principle during the mission and during the debriefings afterwards, at least at first. While he had not admitted it, McCree's vocal objections to Reyes shooting Antonio almost as soon as they breached his office had occupied the back of his mind for a long time. Besides, Overwatch, Blackwatch in particular, was now a dead organization, while he did not agree with the decision to disband it, Genji couldn't argue with the public perception that they had strayed too far from their original purpose. After a few moments, Genji decided to try a less confrontational approach.

"I will admit that Overwatch made many mistakes. But this does not absolve you of your own actions. However, I believe that if you are willing to put your issues with our conduct behind you, then we will be able to grant you the same honor."

Sombra was surprised, she didn't think that the ex-agents would be diplomatic at all. She didn't have much of an issue with putting her ties to Talon to rest, maybe she would miss her old teammates at Talon, but honestly, putting her life in the hands of a brainwashed assassin, a psychopath, and a creepy scientist was probably not a good plan for her long term survival. Talon had been a good source of information, but frankly, their leadership was nuts. She was beginning to consider whether she should cozy up to this 'SGC' instead, they seemed to have a much better appreciation for talented individuals than any of her previous allies. Finally, she responded, directing a cautiously neutral glance towards Tracer.

"I'm willing to get along if you are. I have no intention of dying on some forgotten planet. As for Talon's actions, our partnership was always one of convenience, and there isn't a whole lot that they can do for me out here."

That snapped Tracer out of her guilt-ridden thoughts. What was Genji doing? Sombra was Talon, Talon was evil. Overwatch may have made some mistakes, but Talon seemed to have no other goal than conflict and destruction.

On the other hand, Tracer believed Sombra when she claimed to have no true loyalty to Talon, she didn't seem like the type to have loyalty to anyone. The Americans seemed to be surprisingly trusting towards her, so she supposed that it would fall on her and Genji to keep the hacker from backstabbing them. Doing that meant that they had to get along, at least on the surface.

Not quite willing to make nice, Tracer slowly nodded in Sombra's direction, and turned to Dr. Weir.

"I still don't think she can be trusted. But if she doesn't try anything funny, I'll try to stay out of her way."

Dr. Weir wasn't entirely happy with Tracer's response, but she was painfully familiar with the compromising nature of negotiations. Honestly, she was surprised that they had gotten as far as they had. She responded, "Very well then, it looks like the rest of the delegation is ready. I wish you all luck, and you can all consider it an order to return safe and sound."

The ex-agents and the hacker let the room, not avoiding each other quite as carefully as before. A few minutes later, the gate flared to life as the delegation left to determine exactly what had transpired over the last seventy years.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

 _ **Two months later**_

"….. back. Need to …. of here. … this Gelen, I don't … I … Tau'ri."

The replicator cruiser patrolling their side of the unofficial (and extremely volatile) boundary between their space and the Alliance's was unable to make out the entire message, which had been transmitted from what they believed to be an abandoned Human base. The message fragments were immediately transmitted through their subspace network, where they were received by a human form replicator on one of their fortress worlds.

The replicators had originally developed their nanite constructed human form models as a countermeasure to an Asgard time dilation device. The newer form of replicator was able to think semi-independently of the collective, which allowed them replicators a significant degree of ingenuity. Unfortunately, the human forms had inherited a certain degree of emotional thinking from their biological counterparts, which had not been helped when their first interactions with the humans of Earth ended with their betrayal.

In fact, their desire for vengeance and their conviction of their own superiority was one of the key motivating factors behind the replicator's decision to stay in the Milky Way Galaxy rather than attempt to find one that was easier to consume.

That desire for vengeance, along with a not insignificant amount of fear, crossed the human form's features. After a brief discussion with the others, a decision was made.

The replicators did not want to risk Earth reemerging. They had already won far more victories than anyone with their technical sophistication or resources had the right to, and now they had an Ancient weapons platform, and the genetic key required to operate it. They could not risk an all-out invasion, especially not with Earth so close to alliance space.

Instead, a single human form with a small force of insectoids would be quietly dispatched to investigate. The replicators could not guarantee a secure subspace link close to Alliance space, so the task force would essentially be on its own. The transmission itself had originated a bit farther into Alliance space, so that world would be left alone for now. One advantage that the replicators hoped to use was the fact that the existence of any race other than themselves had been kept secret from the general population of the planet; evidently the human leadership thought the knowledge would cause discord within their civilization.

In this case however, secrecy would likely be to the Replicators advantage, most humans would not recognize them for what they were, improving the odds of an infiltration mission. The human form was chosen, when it had been created, it had shown a preference for the form of a female human its creator had encountered while spying on a minor Go'auld. 'She' had even chosen a name for herself: Kim Seo-yeon.

She quickly entered a waiting ship with a small army of insectoids and charted a course for Earth. As she began to lose contact with the subspace link, she began to feel fearful for the first time in her life.

With how fast humans moved, what had changed after seventy years on Earth? Would she be recognized?

A slight glimmer of hope flashed through her thoughts; the replicators had noted that earth-based humans seemed to have an easier time dealing with entities unlike them than most other races, even after their home world had left them behind, the remaining Tau'ri had been able to overcome the animosity between the Tok'ra, Free Jaffa, and the Asgard to form their Alliance. If a small group of humans could achieve that, Kim Seo-yeon wondered what their home world would be like.

Perhaps if she played this right, on both sides, they may even be willing to make peace.

 **A/N: I may have taken that story about Tracer a bit farther than I originally intended.**

 **As for why Earth was left alone over the past seventy years, I will explain the Alliance's motivations next chapter. As for the other two major powers: the Go'auld and the Replicators are busy with their own problems, and don't want to risk drawing Earth back into the conflict.**

 **If you're wondering about the remains of Anubis' fleet, I have a kind of weak explanation. SG1 season 8 episode 3 (I looked it up on the wiki) had the ISS make an orbital correction to avoid some of the debris, which indicates that the battle took place near its orbit (300 mi altitude). This is a fairly low orbit (a geosynchronous orbit would be at about a 22k mi altitude, and the approximate minimum altitude to have a complete orbit is about 62 mi due to atmospheric drag), so the ISS occasionally must make burns to account for a slight amount of atmospheric drag. Without anything to boost them, I believe that most of the remains of Anubis' fleet would have started to decay and would have burned up in the atmosphere within a few years.**


	3. Chapter 3- You Hold all the Cards

**A/N: Hello everyone, here's another chapter. As always, responses and reviews are appreciated.**

Chapter 3

 _ **December, 2074**_

Two months, and there had been no word from Sombra. It was clear that wherever she was, she was either incapacitated or being held against her will. Thus, it fell to Reaper and his remaining 'teammates' to find her.

It occurred to Moira that Sombra might be dead, not that she would ever admit as much. Reyes made a huge show of being a death obsessed murderer, but Moira had known him before that. Reyes didn't retain much of his ideals after his falling out with Overwatch and subsequent 'death', but he still did not believe in leaving anyone behind.

Alternatively, maybe he just wanted to kill her himself for stealing the dropship and putting them at risk of getting caught. Reyes wasn't exactly stable nowadays.

The Talon hacker assigned to them to replace Sombra had finally found a lead after Reyes and Widomaker had a talk with him about the importance of locating his predecessor quickly. They had even brought him along on their retrieval mission.

Because of the hacker's 'encouragement' from her colleagues, Moira had been unable to get any complete sentences out of him. Reyes hadn't been forthcoming either, he had simply ordered them to get to the ship after walking out of the room; patience was one of the traits he hadn't kept from his Overwatch days, if he even had it then.

Now, a few hours later, Moira noticed that he was now only slightly shaking in fear and decided to clarify what they were looking for.

"So, what did you find that has Reaper in such a hurry?"

The hacker looked at her, a tremor dominating his otherwise unremarkable features. Moira was a well-known quantity in Talon; everyone had heard stories about the tall, scary woman with dichromatic eyes. Her unusual appearance wasn't what made her intimidating, however. It was the ease with which she experimented on people, even her 'teammates', and the abilities that she had developed as a result.

Tom had never been a remarkable person. He wasn't particularly strong or attractive. According to the blue assassin, he wasn't very good at hacking either. He hoped that his lack of interesting features would prevent the geneticist from taking a closer interest in him. Now, those hopes were being dashed.

"I… I found a person. An ex-pilot named General O'Neill."

Moira was intrigued; General Jonathan O'Neill had made a name for himself during the Omnic crisis after bringing down a titan with a single fighter jet. If he hadn't been far too old when she had joined Talon, she would have considered him as a candidate for her next assassin.

"Go on."

"S... Sombra was looking into some old American military files. She found an old project buried under that base you found. I found his name in some of the associated files."

"And why did Sombra not find this first?"

The hacker winced. Questioning Sombra's abilities was a bad idea, but getting on Moira's bad side was even worse.

"I think that she might have missed it."

Moira had a clearer understanding now. Also, the cowed tone that the Hacker was using was starting to annoy her. She nodded and moved over to the rest of her team to discuss their plan. The hacker looked relieved.

"Yes?"

Widomaker was the result of some extensive genetic manipulation and cutting-edge surgical procedures, courtesy of Moira. She wasn't supposed to feel any emotions, but Moira could have sworn that she saw a glint of boredom in her yellow eyes.

"I assume that we have an extraction plan?"

Widomaker snorted, "Our target is over ninety years old and lives alone. We will infiltrate his house, knock him out, and carry him back here."

Moira was not convinced. O'Neill had performed a few maneuvers in his piloting days that suggested there was something more to him. Nevertheless, if a plan was going to be made, it would have to go through Reyes. Moira looked at him.

"What"

"O'Neill was a talented pilot during the crisis, maybe a little too talented. I believe that some caution would be prudent."

Reaper almost chuckled. Moira advising caution. If only she had thought of that when she was 'repairing' him after the explosion in Switzerland. He replied, "We outnumber him, just stick to the plan."

Moira sighed, realizing that she would not be able to convince him. She idly inspected the hacker again. He tried to make himself look as small as possible. Moira wasn't impressed.

The dropship approached the American suburb, its stealth features preventing the local military from noticing its presence. It came to hover over its target: an upper middle-class home in Colorado Springs.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Retired General Jonathan O'Neill frowned. Something was wrong. Then he heard a noise, something that almost sounded like a jet. "Talon", he thought.

He had been expecting them ever since the SGC collapsed during Sombra's attempted infiltration. He suspected that they had evacuated off world, the incident reports he had accessed indicated that about an hour had passed between when the base had been breached and when it had collapsed.

Talon was probably looking for their missing agent. As much as O'Neill could respect that, he would have to disappoint them.

He silently removed his pistol from its safe. Then he activated a few thermal decoys, covered himself in an insulating blanket, and waited for the agents to make their move. He didn't wait long.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Reaper was the first one into the house. He traveled as a cloud of black smoke and did not locate their target. After several minutes of searching, he heard a muffled cry that sounded suspiciously like that idiotic hacker.

He continued to listen. Nothing for a minute. He Moira shout from one of the rooms he had just cleared. He moved to investigate.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Curious.

The hacker lay dead at her feet, his neck broken. Perhaps the General still had a few tricks up his sleeve. Moira looked around the theoretically cleared room.

"Don't move"

Moira instinctively faded, located the General behind her, and rematerialized behind him, preparing to use a short burst of her biotic siphon.

WHAM!

The general didn't give her a chance, his pistol hit the side of her head the moment she reappeared, knocking her to the ground for a few critical seconds. The general pointed his gun at her.

BAM! BAM!

Two shots from Reyes' hellfires in the adjacent room were enough to force the general to duck, allowing Moira time to scramble towards the door.

A black mist poured through the door before reforming into Reyes. General O'Neill ducked beneath his next shot before firing a few shots from his pistol into Reyes' gut. Reyes' grunted, those would have been fatal to someone without his abilities. He began to aim his shotguns, hoping to get a nonfatal leg or arm shot when he noticed a bright red dot on his opponent's chest. General O'Neill noticed it too and dropped his gun in a gesture of surrender.

"I don't suppose you wanna talk about this?"

Reaper pulled out his taser and shot it at the American General. He fell to the ground, unconscious.

"My thoughts exactly", Reaper mocked. The remaining team returned to the ship with their captive. The Hacker's body was recovered by the police several days later, but never identified.

All three members of the team decided not to mention just how close the ninety plus year old general had come to beating them.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

 _ **December 2074, two days before Talon abducted General O'Neill.**_

Kim Seo-yeon's ship arrived near the legendary world's single moon. Surprisingly, it now contained a settlement.

"They've been busy", she thought before running a more powerful scan.

"No humans?", she thought. "Primates, they seem to be running the place."

The lunar settlement was probably relevant, but if there were no humans present, Kim had more pressing concerns. What was happening on Earth? Slightly confused, she tapped into their surprisingly primitive global information network and instructed her insectoid counterparts to process as much as they could.

That was a bad idea; the others had not been exaggerating about how much data the humans generated. Kim was forced to pull her brethren out after about ten seconds for their collective sanity.

They had gathered a few pieces of information. Kim noticed that one of the regions near the planet's largest ocean appeared to be related to her adopted form's cultural background. It was divided into two nations known as 'North Korea' and 'South Korea'.

Otherwise, a fascinating development had occurred. The stargate still appeared to be a secret; Kim could not get into any classified files on such short notice, but extra-terrestrial life still appeared to be a myth to most of the population. However, the humans had developed their own version of intelligent machines. Evidently, they had rebelled about thirty years ago. Surprisingly, and perhaps hopefully, their conflict had died down to a dull roar.

Kim considered her options. Unlike the original models, most of the younger human forms were curious about their biological counterparts. Realistically, the war was mostly motivated by distrust from the collective intelligence and anger from the older models, who had a falling out with some humans shortly after they were created. The younger models, the originals, and even the collective intelligence had internally acknowledged long ago that they had moved beyond the simple model of endless expansion which was ultimately the root cause of their conflict with the other galactic factions.

Kim wanted to learn about this 'South Korea'; she was curious to see what had developed over several millennia since her ancestors had clearly been taken from the peninsula.

"Not ancestors", she chided herself. The elder human forms didn't like it when the younger models started to relate to humans.

Even ignoring her personal curiosity, there appeared to be a sub-oceanic base controlled by these 'Omnics' near the region. Kim Seo-yeon figured that she could satisfy both her curiosities at once. After all, replicators were famously good at multitasking.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

 _ **December, 2074, sixteen hours after the capture of General O'Neill**_

"Understood, I will see to it immediately."

Akande Ogundimu put down his phone, he felt annoyed. Talon had expended valuable resources to capture the American general, and even beyond Reyes' desire to locate his missing teammate, the General clearly had information.

Information that Talon's benefactors wanted buried. His instructions were clear: nobody talks to him, and he was to have an 'accident' before anyone could violate the first order.

Akande considered defying Talon's primary source of funding but decided against it. Talon may have been a powerful organization, but this mysterious group had proven capable of things that gave even them pause.

Sighing, he went to 'interrogate' the prisoner.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

General O'Neill had refused to speak when he woke up close to the Talon base, despite Reyes' and Widomaker's best efforts. Both were impressed; Moira was right, there was something _more_ about him.

General O'Neill recognized the man who walked into the room instantly. Seven feet tall, African descent, muscles. And, of course, the unmistakable gauntlet that covered his right arm. Doomfist.

O'Neill also recognized the look in the man's eyes. He wasn't there to talk. O'Neill had faced death before, he even had memories of his 'father' dying on several occasions. He had a feeling that this one would stick.

"So, I take it you're not here to tell me that this had been a huge misunderstanding?", O'Neill asked, his trademark light sarcasm masking any fear he felt. This was it for him.

Doomfist nodded apologetically. He had seen this man's record as a pilot and was able to read between the lines on the reports from Reyes' team. General O'Neill was strong, powerful, and certainly deserved a place in his vision for the world. Alas, he could not deny his benefactors, not if that vision was to come true, not yet.

"Can I at least ask who gave the order?"

Doomfist considered his request. He was annoyed at the interference in his organization. Also, this 'accident' was off the record. It couldn't hurt.

"I do not know what they call themselves. Only that they are influential, wealthy, and possess powerful technologies."

That could have described several organizations: good and bad. Nevertheless, O'Neill knew who he was talking about: The Trust.

"Well, tell them that if I come back this time, I'm going to kick their collective asses."

Akande was confused, come back? But O'Neill was done talking; he stood up, went through the motion of straightening his shirt, and turned to face him.

Facing death head on. Akande was even more annoyed, he would have liked to have tried to recruit this man, he seemed a lot more stable than Reyes. Nevertheless, he didn't have a choice. He respectfully nodded at the general and powered up his glove.

The general didn't flinch. Doomfist rocketed forward, striking the general at full force in the chest, killing him instantly.

He walked out of the room and nodded to one of the guards posted outside. No words were required, the guard knew what had to be done, and that it was to be discrete.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

"Hello Jonathan"

Jonathan O'Neill looked around. The titan. He remembered this place, he had nearly died taking it down. Clearly, he wasn't actually there; the omnic workers and guards simply walked around him as though he was invisible.

"Hello Oma"

He knew what was going on. Oma was getting involved again, this time offering ascension as an alternative to death.

He had to admit that he was curious to see how things turned out. Either way, his personal involvement in 'mortal' events was finished. Some discussions with Oma several years ago had finally convinced her to reveal some of the history of her people. Afterwards, Jonathan and Cassie became more sympathetic to the risks that the Ancients took when messing with their corporeal counterparts.

"Are you ready?"

Oma knew Jonathan. Not just as a powerful ascended being would be able to gather background information and pretend to be omniscient, but as an individual. She knew what his response would be.

"I suppose, do I just walk into the light?"

Oma chuckled, she would enjoy having the human around. Maybe he would even convince the others to lighten up once in a while.

"Just take my hand."

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

"The General is dead?", Widomaker asked, no hint of emotion present in her voice.

"Y…Y…Yes", the grunt was clearly terrified; nobody wanted to have the attention of Widomaker, Moira, and Reaper at the same time.

"And exactly how did that come to happen?", Moira's carefully toned response betrayed only a passing sense of irritation. It didn't reflect the anger and suspicion that she felt at losing such an interesting subject, or at losing their best lead on whatever Sombra had gotten herself mixed up in.

"T…There was an accident", the grunt said lamely. Even he could tell that the official story of the general trying to escape was a lie, but he wasn't going to be the one to question it.

"An accident?", Reaper didn't sound convinced. On the plus side, he didn't seem to think that the grunt really knew anything.

"He tried to escape, one of the guards hit him with a taser in the heart, and it stopped."

"In the heart, so his body is undamaged?"

The grunt was panicking now, why had Doomfist ordered him to deliver the news? "I don't know", he finally squeaked.

The three agents looked at each other. None of them believed the story, but the grunt probably didn't know anything. The only thing they knew for certain was that the official story was bullshit, which meant that Doomfist was withholding the real reason that their lead was dead. He may have even been the one to kill him. And any attempt at getting access to the body was pointless. Wordlessly, they turned away.

 _ **Later**_

Widowmaker crushed the last recording device under her heel. She looked at her two teammates.

Reaper was pacing menacingly. In fairness, everything he did seemed sinister, between his black hood, black overcoat, bone white skull mask, massive shotguns, and gravelly voice, he projected an intimidating, if slightly over-the-top presence. He spoke.

"We can't trust Doomfist, he's been hiding something from us."

Widomaker agreed. Theoretically, her loyalty was to Talon. However, she had more free will than she had let on, and had gradually begun to realize which people in Talon were worth working with. Oddly enough, this was a development which had started shortly after her encounter with that British menace. Probably a coincidence.

"It would seem that he is. We will have to return Sombra on our own."

Moira spoke up, "I looked over some of the files left behind by the hacker after the General disappeared. Apparently, he found a second name."

Widowmaker was surprised, "Why did he not share it with us?"

Moira replied, amused, "Sometimes one requires a more sophisticated approach to achieve optimal results."

Neither Widowmaker nor Reaper rose to her bait, "Who was it?"

Moira knew the second name. She had once been her teacher, before _Angela_ had gotten involved. They had not parted on friendly terms. She also happened to be one of the best doctors in the last century.

"Doctor Cassandra Fraiser"

Of course, neither Widomaker nor Reyes recognized the name. Philistines.

"She taught Dr. Ziegler, even contributed to her biotic tech.", a bit of resentment had seeped into her voice; of course, the younger, hotter doctor, with her brilliant blond hair, perfect figure, and winning personality had charmed her way into the good graces of one of the best doctors in the last century. Moira had to make sacrifices to achieve greatness, something that 'Mercy' had never understood.

Reyes read into Moira's statement. Dr. Ziegler and Dr. O'Deorian had never gotten long; Mercy thought that Moira lacked a moral compass, while Moira thought that Mercy was afraid of the potential benefits of her research and was willing to let people die rather than benefit from it. He had thought that they were both right and had tried to stay out of their conflict. Not that that had worked.

"So we'll have to talk to her.", everything that he said sounded like a threat, so Reyes didn't bother trying to sound neutral.

"Not we, you.", Widomaker countered, looking at Moira. "If Talon is truly hiding something, then they will become suspicious if all three of us suddenly leave."

Moira nodded, the assassin was right. She was unsure of how she felt about talking to Dr. Fraiser. She had once practically worshiped her, which made her siding with Dr. Ziegler far more painful than it had to be. However, this wasn't a typical reunion.

Maybe she would feel a little better if she got to interrogate her. She would at least get the chance to confront her after her cruel rejection all those years ago.

"I can claim to be doing research for a project of mine." Technically, that was true, just not in the way Doomfist would think when she explained a few hours later why she would be leaving for several days. Absently nodding his head, this hadn't been her first research trip, Akande approved her excursion.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Dr. Cassandra Fraiser, known to her close friends as Cassie, noticed a blinking icon on her laptop. The icon was a notice from one of the few pieces of alien technology that she and John still had access to; Thor had given her a security program as a birthday present shortly after her adoption. The Asgard had some strange ideas about gifts.

Cassie had been expecting something like this ever since John had disappeared a few days ago. It seemed that someone was looking for information on where she lived. They had probably found it; she was famous in certain circles after all.

Cassie thought for a moment before deciding on her course of action. "Time to call in a favor", she mumbled, dialing up an old friend on a secure line.

"Doctor Angela Ziegler speaking."

"Hello Angela"

"Cassie, min fründ! It is so good to hear from you. How have you been? Have you been keeping up on your treatments?"

Cassie chuckled, it was amusing how seriously the younger doctor took her mentor's health. Which was excellent, between their biotic technology and some of the subtle effects of the genetic manipulation performed on her in her youth by Nirti. Both she and John had aged gracefully, each benefiting from genetic and technological improvements from alien and terrestrial sources.

"I assume that the rest of Overwatch is with you?"

Cassie heard a scuffle in the background as her protégé nearly dropped her phone. Angela had never been able to slip anything by her. A slight empathic ability from her hok'tar days probably contributed to that.

"I'm sorry Cassie, it's just…"

Cassie interrupted her, her reassuring tone having as much of an effect as her words.

"Don't worry. The world needs protectors, Petraeus act or no, and I believe that you are up to the challenge."

Angela breathed a sigh of relief. Dr. Frasier had almost been a mother to her; her original parents had been killed in the crisis, and when the two met while Angela was a student in med school, they had quickly become inseparable. Angela didn't know if she could handle having her be the one to reveal their secret vigilante organization. A chill clutched at her heart when she realized that she must be calling about Overwatch. They had always preferred force to solve their problems, even if it was carefully applied to minimize casualties.

"Why are you calling?"

Cassie sighed, she didn't want to worry her protégé, but she also didn't want to risk whatever happened to her old friend happen to her.

"Somebody is looking for me. I suspect they are behind John's disappearance."

Mercy saw what was coming. Cassie had been the one who inspired her to become a battlefield medic; she had never been shy about putting herself in harm's way to help others. She should just have asked Overwatch to hide her, but there was no way that her mentor would settle for that.

"I want to set a trap. I believe that whoever it is thinks I know something, so I'm feeling a little curious."

Dr. Ziegler was curious. Cassie had always been secretive about certain parts of her past.

"I can't tell you what it is I think that they're looking for, but it is important that they not find it."

"Fine, I will talk to them. But I insist on being there."

"Cassie…"

"No buts, if you insist on putting yourself at risk, then I insist on being there to rescue you."

Cassie sighed, Angela could be stubborn, a trait she had picked up from her parents and reinforced during her time with her.

"Fine, but I insist that you be armed."

"Understood", Angela finished the conversation after getting a few more pieces of information. They were going to catch the mysterious figure by hiding an Overwatch team in her house. When the infiltrators showed themselves, they would be captured before they could even get close to their target.

Angela put down the phone and went to explain the plan. At this point, they had mostly reassembled their old group, it had even turned out that Commander Morrison and Captain Amari were still alive. That had been an interesting conversation. And, of course, several new faces had joined them.

"Brigette!"

"Ja, Doktor Ziegler?"

"Come with me, I need some help."

"Ok?"

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Moira slipped past a few guards. Evidently, Dr. Fraiser was now important enough to warrant her own security. Moira suppressed a derisive snort.

She made her way through the mansion, and eventually found a light on in a library. How… _quaint_.

She silently entered the room and located the sole occupant. The characteristic ring on her finger revealed it to be her target despite her approach from behind.

"I can hear you, you know."

Moira froze. Damn, Cassie was hard to fool. Even in her old age, her hearing was as sharp as a twenty-year old's. Cassie rotated her chair to face her.

"Dr. O'Deorian"

Moira winced at the polite formality in her ex-idol's face. She had secretly hoped that she would be a little pleased to see her.

Personal feelings aside, she had a mission. Summoning up as much authority and posture as she could, Moira approached.

"Dr. Cassandra Fraiser, we believe that you have information on a missing agent. You will tell me what I want to know."

"Not we, its only her. Should we tell Mercy?", the voice of Brigette asked through a hidden earpiece.

"Naw, I say we let 'em fight it out", drawled the voice of Jesse McCree. Jesse had never liked Moira and had not been very close to Dr. Ziegler.

The debate was rendered moot a second later.

"Moira? Is that you?", Moira's least favorite voice called out from a nearby doorway, its owner holding two cups of steaming tea.

" _Calm and professional"_ , Moira told herself. She had a mission, she had to complete it if she wanted to get Sombra back. Moira began to wish she had Sombra with her, she was much better at defusing volatile situations.

"Of course it's you. You were also behind John's disappearance, weren't you? Where is he?"

" _Calm and Professional"_

"You know what, I'm not even surprised. You never did have a clue what ethics were, why should you know anything about loyalty?"

" _Calm and Professional. Calm and professional."_

" _Fuck"_ Moira turned to face her nemesis, years of resentment blasting through her cold and professional façade.

Cassie rolled her eyes. She saw this coming the moment she recognized Moira's voice. Both doctors had once been her students, and both were worthy, talented students, but Moira had relied more on skill and hard work where Mercy had used her slightly superior talent. Either way would have made them excellent doctors, but Moira had developed a huge inferiority complex aimed at her younger colleague, who had not responded with her usual professional demeanor. Eventually, the two had a massive falling out, and Cassie had been forced to choose Angela as Moira began to associate herself with some of her less scrupulous colleagues. Even when they worked together in Overwatch, the two had always kept a distance.

Cassie hoped that the Overwatch team wasn't too busy gawking at the two doctors to capture their target. The rivalry between them had been legendary; at some point, Jesse McCree had even started a pool on it before being shut down by Commander Reyes.

"You don't think that I'm loyal? I'm only here to find out what spooky secret my idiotic friend fell into this time!", Moira knew in the back of her mind that Sombra would never let her forget that comment when she found out about it. But at this point, she didn't care.

"Oh, I know just how loyal you are! First Overwatch, then Blackwatch, then Talon? You seem quite happy to throw in with whoever funds your stupid research if you can even call it that!"

"You think that I have flexible ideals? One minute, you're some saintly pacifist who wouldn't touch a gun to save your own life. The next, you're building yourself your very own boyfriend/murder-bot!"

Now Angela was angry. Neither she nor Genji had been willing to admit their feelings for each other when they were in Overwatch, to do so would have wrecked her career and spat in her sense of ethics. However, Overwatch was gone now, she was technically an outlaw, and Genji's months long absence had forced her to seriously reconsider how she really felt.

"At least I _had_ someone! I bet you never even considered having a family, or even friends, you would have turned them into another one of your projects!"

That hurt. Moira had never been the type to get close to anyone. Even her sister had never been close. There was one exception: a childhood friend who had been killed during the crisis. Mercy knew that.

That did it; Dr. Fraiser would just have to wait. It was time to see if miss goody-two-shoes and her fancy _fucking_ suit were as good in a fight as she had heard.

Moira wasn't going to use her biotic technology. Doing so would have felt too _impersonal_. She would be settling this using more time-honored methods.

Mercy saw Moira running towards her and charged at the embodiment of everything wrong with science, ready to meet her blow for blow. She jumped right before they collided to provide her with a height advantage.

Moira collapsed as a dart came out of the shadows and landed in her side. Mercy passed over her, having leapt to start her engagement, landing in an undignified heap. She pulled herself up and looked at Moira with rage in her eyes before realizing what had happened.

"Children, behave", Captain Ana Amari quipped as she walked over to their sleeping target. She looked disapprovingly at the younger doctor, whose rage filled expression gave way to embarrassment.

Angela didn't say anything as Jesse and Brigette quickly followed the elderly sniper. Both had guilty looks on their faces. Brigette picked up their sleeping target.

Angela regained enough composure to face her annoyed mentor.

"Even if she was alone, Talon may send someone else. You should stay with us.", Even if she was embarrassed, Mercy knew that they needed to find out what Moira had been talking about.

Cassie looked conflicted for a few seconds before making up her mind. A minute later, the room was empty, its previous occupants en-route to Gibraltar.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Machines first. Kim piloted her cloaked ship, a commandeered Go'auld tel'tak, towards the Omnic base. Tel'taks were common throughout the galaxy: Go'auld, Alliance members, even pirates used them, so even if she were detected, the chances of her presence being traced back to the replicators was low so long as she managed to evade capture. She went beneath the waves to get a closer look.

Wow, these Omnics thought big. A hulking, heavily-armed beast of a robot stared back at her. Fascinated, Kim failed to notice the proximity alarm for an extra second. It was too long.

A patrolling Gwishin, a model identical to the one that had launched the widely televised assault on the nearby city of Busan, ran into the invisible ship, disabling the delicate cloaking device.

As a human form replicator, Kim had extremely fast reaction times. Just not fast enough; the Omnics instantly began shooting at the now visible intruder in their midst. Within moments, her ship was torn apart.

Kim could survive being submerged, but the insectoids could not. They could only build blocks out of the resources they had on hand; naquadah and trinium blocks were too valuable to risk on this mission, and Asgard manufactured alloy was even harder to come by. Blocks made of more mundane materials, even nominally waterproof ones, could not function in seawater. Thus, her few surviving brethren quickly died in the unforgiving seawater.

Kim could only watch helplessly. Human forms were heavy, which meant that they were not good at swimming. As she sank, the heat from her destroyed ship quickly dispersed in the water and the wreckage began to sink. Suddenly, a red, artificial eye dominated her field of vision as another strange robot, the same kind that had struck her ship, identified her as an item of interest, wrapped several of its tentacles around her, and began to pull her towards some kind of entrance. The water pressure prevented her from changing shape to escape.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

 _ **October 2074**_

As the gate deactivated, Tracer and Genji looked around, intrigued. They had emerged into a heavily fortified chamber. Weapons emplacements pointed at the gate from all directions, the only two exits were heavily armored doors, and a trapdoor below the gate suggested that it could be dropped into some sort of containment chamber should anything go awry.

A second after the wormhole closed, a loud rattling sound dominated the chamber as a series of metal plates extended from inside the gate, quickly forming a solid shield where the wormhole used to be. While not entirely sure how it worked, both ex-agents guessed that they didn't want to run into it while trying to get through.

"Please use the exit on your right. A group of escorts is waiting to take you to the council.", A voice issued out of a hidden loudspeaker. Carter noted with approval that the designers of this chamber had forgone the glass window connecting ops to the gate room.

After passing through the exit, the delegation was quickly lead outside the Gamma Site's, now known as Sanctuary's according to one of their escorts, gate facility.

A crowd was waiting for them. Everyone but Tracer, Genji, and Sombra recognized the traditional robes used by the Jaffa and the Tok'ra. A few Asgard were also present, which led to shocked expressions on all three of their faces.

None of the delegation recognized the clothing worn by the remaining human looking individuals in the crowd. Jackson silently theorized that they must have been descendants of the original off-world teams, as well as humans from other transplanted cultures.

As Lena took in the sights, a thought occurred to her. Emily. She didn't know how long she was going to be gone for, and with the mountain collapsed, what would her girlfriend think? Emily had been nervous about Lena returning to Overwatch but had ultimately understood that she couldn't ignore the call. Now she was alone, probably worried sick.

Genji was having similar thoughts. Was Angela worried? Overwatch probably thought they were dead, buried under millions of tons of rock in a secret restricted military base. As an afterthought, it occurred to him that he really wished that she was here. She would have loved this place.

After a short ride on some kind of hover bus, the delegation arrived at an important looking building, and were led inside. Quickly, they arrived in a large meeting room.

Major Carter, Teal'c, and Doctor Jackson clearly recognized at least one of the individuals who came out to greet them.

"Thor, it's so good to see you again.", Major Carter knelt to give the diminutive alien a hug. Jackson followed suit, while Teal'c bowed his head.

"Likewise, Major Carter. It has been many years, and there is much to catch up on.", Thor, as he was evidently called, responded.

"I assume that these are the three people that you discussed?", Tracer, Genji, and Sombra stood out from the rest of the delegation because of the technology present on their bodies as well as their distinctive clothing. They introduced themselves.

"Hi… everyone, call me Tracer!"

"You may call me Genji"

"Sombra", Sombra didn't mean to be rude, she was still a little stunned at meeting a Roswell style alien named Thor. Maybe she needed to take a closer look at some of those alien conspiracy theories.

Thor acknowledged each of them. Turning to the three members of SG1, he continued.

"I feel that I must start with an explanation. You were left frozen in time for seventy years after all."

They nodded.

"Shortly after the time dilation field was activated, your world sent out a message using the subspace transmitter we gifted to you. Your governments had concluded because of the coup that you were not yet ready to walk among the stars, and that your world was to be left in peace."

They nodded, the recording left at the Alpha Site had mentioned that message.

"The Tok'ra and Asgard high councils agreed with that decision. It was decided that if your world wished to progress at a slower rate, away from the dangers of the galaxy, that we owed to you to respect your world's wishes."

Now they looked sad. Teal'c had missed much of his child's life; he would have been almost ninety years old now. Jackson and Carter both had friends and family outside the SGC, all of whom were probably long dead. Not to mention the rest of the base and their loved ones. Nevertheless, they didn't argue with their decisions; there was nothing they could do to change them. An ultimately, the blame lay on their own leaders for isolating themselves so readily. A question occurred to Jackson.

"Why didn't the Go'auld attack us?"

"Shortly after your world went into isolation, the replicators began to make significant gains in their war against us. We were quickly forced to evacuate our home galaxy and try to seek refuge here. The replicators followed us, and the organic races of the galaxy were nearly defeated until an alliance was formed."

Thor paused, allowing the delegation to absorb his words.

"The Asgard, the Tok'ra, the Free Jaffa, the remaining Humans, and the Go'auld came together to fight against the Replicators. The Alliance still almost fell to them, but we finally developed a countermeasure."

Thor noted the surprised looks on the delegation's faces. Team up with the Go'auld? Thor would have thought it unlikely himself, but when fighting for their survival, they had been forced to put aside their differences, at least temporarily.

"A collaboration between Asgard and Human scientists created a unique weapon. An energy pulse that magnifies and broadcasts organic brainwaves in a fashion disruptive to the Replicators. They were unable to adapt to the complex and unpredictable nature of the pulses, and we were able to drive them back."

Thor paused. He was leaving out a lot of history that had developed around 'thoughtspeakers', as Humans called them. The devices were sensitive to their user's emotions; the deep hatred within the Go'auld and the passionate nature of the Humans had allowed both to wield the devices with frightening efficiency. In some cases, more experienced wielders were even able to exert influence over nearby Replicators with substantial effort.

"Once the Replicators were no longer a pressing threat, the differences between the Go'auld and the rest of the Alliance caused a great amount of conflict. Eventually, the Go'auld secretly discovered and partially reverse engineered an Ancient gate-ship. They revealed their deception, and their increased technological sophistication, and seceded from the Alliance. After the conflict settled, each faction controlled roughly one third of the Galaxy."

Daniel was still waiting for an answer. Thor obliged.

"The reason that you were not attacked largely rests around these divisions, and around Earth's actions long ago. Your world is in the center of contested space between us and the Replicators, they cannot risk attacking without forcing a response, thus leaving both vulnerable to the Go'auld. Additionally, among the Go'auld and the Replicators, Earth has developed a reputation as a dangerous and unpredictable force. The galaxy knows of the Ancient weapon buried beneath your world's southern continent, and your many victories against the Go'auld and Replicators have not gone unnoticed."

"So… they were afraid of us?"

"That would be an acceptable way of stating the situation, if not a simplistic one."

The delegation, with the exceptions of Sombra, Tracer, and Genji, were pleasantly surprised. They had always been the underdogs against the Go'auld, so it was nice to be the ones that everybody was afraid of for a change.

Sombra, Tracer, and Genji all looked confused. Finally, Genji spoke up.

"Forgive me, but we were forced to leave Earth with the rest of the Stargate Command personnel shortly after we were captured. After we arrived, we did not have time to fully acquaint ourselves with the nature of what we had discovered."

Thor looked at the cyborg. He was correct, and it would only be fair to give them a chance to understand their situation. After all, Earth had clearly reemerged onto the galactic stage, and in their current conflict, ignorance could be fatal. Thor nodded to one of his companions, the Tok'ra representative. Not one to miss a chance to share his opinion of the Go'auld, Ki'til's eyes glowed, and he began to speak.

"The Go'auld are a race of parasitic, aquatic reptiles. They possess the ability to assert complete control over a host. Millenia ago, using their Unas hosts, they learned to operate the Stargates, and began to interact with the rest of the galaxy. As a result, they gained access to powerful technologies, which they used to conquer and enslave their neighbors." Ki'til turned to Thor and nodded, Thor described his people's own involvement.

"Eventually, my people, the Asgard, became aware of the Go'auld. We began to counter their expansion, using our own technological superiority against their numerical advantage. Eventually, a Go'auld by the name of Ra took one of us as a host. However, our biology is not compatible with the Go'auld, so both began to die and descend into madness. Eventually, he was defeated in a major battle, and forced to flee. It was at that point that he found your home world. He took one of your people as a host and discovered that you were in fact compatible with their physiology, even more so than the Unas. Armed with a vast supply of easily dominated hosts, Ra gained power within the ranks of the Go'auld.", Thor turned to the Free Jaffa representative, Jo'pli, allowing him to explain the history of the Jaffa.

Jo'pli briefly stared at Teal'c. Even before his mysterious disappearance, he had become legendary among the free Jaffa as one of the founding members of their movement. The deaths of numerous false gods at his hands had not harmed his status either. Teal'c nodded at him, and he briefly wondered if he should try out the human custom of 'autographs'. Maybe later, for now, the humans required an education. He turned to the three humans.

"Shortly after Ra established his own power, the Asgard were pushed back, eventually settling for a peace treaty. With his power amongst the Go'auld established, Ra and his lieutenants began to experiment on your people. Eventually, he discovered a way to change them to nurture infant parasites in a fashion that granted them some of the increased strength and vitality that they gave their hosts, which led to the creation of our people."

At this point, Sombra was listening to every word. Information was power, and she was getting as much as she could handle. Suddenly, she noticed something out of the corner of her eye.

There was a man, a Jaffa if she had her races straight, who looked a bit too nervous. He was fiddling with something. Sombra directed her hacking device towards him on its lowest setting, hoping that there were no alien alarms that would go off in response. There weren't, and Sombra discovered that there was an explosive within the man's body. Unfortunately, she wouldn't be able to get into it without giving more power to her access tool, which would make it detectable. She needed a distraction.

"Ra and his fellow Go'auld began to pose as Human gods to better subjugate them. They began to transpl…"

Too late.

"LIES!", the Jaffa shouted, surging to his feet, a device that Sombra had determined to be a detonator in his hand. "You speak falsehoods about your gods!"

This instantly caused a panic; the room surged but was then forced to remain still when the man threatened to detonate himself.

"Distract him", Sombra whispered to Teal'c. Teal'c nodded; the man had moved away from anyone who could get ahold of the dead man switch in his hand, so whatever Sombra was planning, it was their best chance.

"The Go'auld not gods, but parasites! You would dishonor yourself by murdering innocent people in their name!"

Sombra employed her skills at blending in, not an easy feat in her outfit or as the star of an alien meet and greet, but she didn't just claim to be the best, she was. While Teal'c and the bomber were trading clichés about honor and godhood and something else, Sombra quietly slipped behind a pillar and activated her cloak.

"Cease your blasphemy. You will repent, or you will die.", The man engaged in a mostly pointless argument with Teal'c, allowing Sombra time to quietly get close enough to fully access the device.

Hmm, evidently these 'Go'auld' didn't send their top agents on this kind of mission. Go figure. Sombra moved behind the distracted would-be bomber and silently decloaked. She nodded to Teal'c; she needed the man preoccupied for this to work.

Teal'c subtly shook his head. The man had nothing to lose and was done talking. Unless they could get ahold of the detonator, their only hope was to get outside the blast radius.

Sombra was annoyed, but she understood. Teal'c had bought all the time he could. She couldn't use her access tool, not before the man let go of the switch. That left her with one option.

Her cybernetic systems charged for about half a second. The man didn't notice until it was too late as Sombra clutched her arms around her chest before throwing them outwards in the movement keyed to release her personal electronic access/disruption pulse weapon, which she just called an EMP for the sake of her less technically inclined teammates. With her own systems still damaged and unable to handle the load, Sombra was hit the hardest, and fell to the ground with a cry of pain. Before she passed out, it occurred to her that she never used to get injured this much on missions.

The man shouted as a purple wave of light briefly enveloped him and released the button. Somehow, it had disabled the explosive. Whatever she had done also disabled his beam scattering device; the Asgard security system separated him from his device, depositing the bomb safely in a disposal chamber, and the man in a small cell.

The crowd looked at their savior, who was now unconscious. Tracer and Genji were stunned; Sombra had just saved them and hurt herself in the process. Genji was not as shocked, but Tracer began to wonder what the hacker had been thinking.

Major Carter reacted first, running over to Sombra. "I wonder if this is how Janet felt", she thought as she called for a medic. The Asgard did her one better; Thor beamed them to an infirmary, depositing Sombra in a medical pod.

"Is she going to be ok?", yep, she knew how Janet felt now.

"I believe that she will be.", Thor looked at a console, reading some information.

"She has primitive cybernetic systems implanted throughout her body. They all appear to have been damaged. I will attempt to repair them."

Major Carter looked at the unconscious hacker as Thor began to work. She suddenly had a newfound appreciation for what Dr. Fraiser had gone through when dealing with her team.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

After the shock of the bombing died down, the rest of the conference proceeded quickly. Tracer and Genji learned about Ra's domination over the galaxy, and his eventual ousting from Earth. They were both surprised to learn about how a team of American commandoes had killed him in the late 1990s. That had kicked off a continuing conflict with the Go'auld that had claimed the lives of several other 'system lords', as they were called. The conflict, which had been kept secret from the public the entire time, had reached a peak after some kind of super-Go'auld named Anubis had tried to invade the Earth.

Oh, and the Ancients. Evidently, they had colonized earth millions of years ago. At some point, they had set human evolution in motion. And left behind a lot of junk.

Anyways, SG1, which had consisted of Major Carter, Doctor Jackson, Teal'c, and someone named Colonel Jack O'Neill, found and activated some kind of Ancient weapons platform at the last minute, completely destroying Anubis' fleet.

At that point, Tracer picked up on the name O'Neill. Some pointed questions revealed that the General Jonathan O'Neill that had spoken to her and Genji was in fact a clone of Jack, who had not aged correctly because of some security measure in the original's genetic code.

In response, Tracer and Genji offered their own story, which captivated the human part of the crowd while drawing interested expressions from everyone else.

About thirty years ago, a corporation called Omnica began to use automated factories to build intelligent robots, called Omnics. They were shut down after some big scandal, but their factories mysteriously restarted on their own. The new Omnics they produced turned were hostile, and so the Omnic crisis was born.

Several years later, Overwatch was formed as an international task force composed of a diverse, elite group of people. They turned the tide of the Omnic crisis; eventually peace, with a few caveats, was established.

Overwatch lasted for about a decade. It fell apart when it had its own crisis of confidence as allegations of corruption and abuse of power emerged against them. Eventually, their headquarters were destroyed, and the UN pulled the plug.

Now, several years later, the world was approaching another crisis. Talon, a mysterious group of terrorists, was launching attacks aimed at provoking conflicts between Humans and Omnics and had succeeded several times. The Russian Omnium had already become hostile again, and several others were showing signs of following suit.

To make matters worse, a series of climate anomalies had been detected during the Overwatch era. Overwatch had just begun to study them, but with their collapse, everyone was too preoccupied to counter them, and they had gotten worse.

This was where both Lena and Genji brought up the question of getting them home.

"We understand your desire to return home, but your stargate is buried, and Earth is in contested space. If we are detected sending a force, even one consisting of a single craft, we will risk making Earth a target."

Lena and Genji were heartbroken. They wanted to return to their loved ones, but not potentially at the expense of their entire world. Both felt a glimmer of hope when Teal'c spoke.

"It may not be necessary to risk one of your own vessels. When we evacuated to the Alpha Site, we discovered it to have been taken over by a band of pirates. We defeated them and discovered that they possessed an intact Al'kesh."

The Alliance members pondered this, then Tok'ra representative spoke in his characteristic deep voice.

"Such a proposal is risky. You will have to use the cloak; if the replicators detect your approach, they may attempt to apprehend you. Therefore, we cannot send any of our own people on your mission."

Teal'c nodded, having expected as much. He was no stranger to high stakes, risky missions. The representative continued.

"However, the directed neural pulse disruptor weapons developed to combat the Replicators have become common throughout the galaxy. It would not be suspicious to the Replicators or the Go'auld if you were caught in possession of several such devices. Therefore, we will provide you with sufficient armaments to combat the replicators should you encounter them."

It wasn't an outpouring of support, but Tracer and Genji were pleased to see the plan forming. Before they could respond, one of the oddly dressed humans spoke up.

"I feel that I should clarify our position. We are sympathetic to the problems occurring on Earth. Many in our Alliance, myself included, feel a strong connection back to our home world. However, we cannot risk making it a target for the Replicators or the Go'auld. Earth had developed an almost mythic status among many in the galaxy, and the perceived potential for it to fully reemerge would put it at the center of a three-way intergalactic war. Even sending a cloaked pirate vessel carries some risk."

"Then why are you assisting us?", Genji responded.

"The risks of doing nothing are even greater. From your description, Earth is entering a conflict of its own, one that may lead to suffering on a massive scale. Additionally, the stalemate between us, the Replicators, and the Go'auld cannot go on forever. There is some hope that the reemergence of Earth may indirectly put an end to the conflict."

So, their motives were not entirely selfless. Tracer didn't mind; as the public face of Overwatch, she had learned to deal with politicians and foreign governments. Most people just hated the lot of them, and Tracer couldn't say that she enjoyed being around them. But she had come to understand one thing: every government had to protect its interests.

Both agents agreed, Thor spoke.

"I recommend that you do not depart immediately. The Replicators patrol the space between our territory and theirs carefully. It will take several months, but we will be able to create a distraction that will draw enough of their ships away to create a sufficient window for you to approach your world. Once you are present on your world however, it will be difficult for you to contact us until you are able to unbury your stargate."

Several months: Lena's heart sank; that was a long time to be missing. Would Emily wait for her? Tracer, her growing despair evident on her face, turned to face Genji, who she could tell was having similar thoughts.

Nevertheless, neither of them wanted to put the Earth at risk. So, if they had to wait five months before they could return, they would.

 **A/N: Basically, Earth kept winning highly improbably battles when the SGC was active. Now, the Go'auld and the Replicators are afraid of them.**


	4. Chapter 4- Nerf This

**A/N: Hello everyone. I know that this chapter took a bit longer than the previous ones. Ultimately, my intention is to do updates about once a month, but that may accelerate depending on my availability and interest in the story.**

 **As always, reviews are appreciated. If you have any questions about the story, feel free to ask them publicly in a review or privately in a message.**

 **Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended. The** _ **Stargate**_ **franchise is owned by MGM, while** _ **Overwatch**_ **is owned by Blizzard Entertainment. This story is not officially a part of the** _ **Overwatch**_ **or** _ **Stargate**_ **universes. I am not using this story to earn profit. Finally, I am grateful towards MGM and Blizzard for creating these two wonderful fictional universes, as well as to the wikis for OW and SG for providing me with details for their respective canons.**

Chapter 4

Ex Overwatch commander Jack Morrison emerged into a nondescript hallway with a scowl on his face. He closed the door behind him and walked a few steps into a dark room adjacent to the one he had just left.

"That wasn't much", Winston commented. He had been watching the notorious vigilante employ every tactic that he could, at least, the ones he could while the rest of Overwatch was present. Moira had not yielded any information; as far as either he or Jack could tell, she simply didn't know anything.

Ironically, Moira had been caught trying to interrogate the mentor of one of their agents. Evidently her name had come up when Talon went digging through some American military archives in search of leads on their missing agent. Overwatch had lost two agents in the same incident, so everyone was eager to see what the rouge doctor knew.

"She doesn't know anything else", Jack replied. "Has Angela had any luck with Cassie?"

"I haven't heard from her yet, let me call….", Winston was interrupted by Athena, the base AI.

"Winston, several satellites have detected activity off the coast of Busan. I believe the Gwishin have launched another attack."

That got both agent's attention. A rouge group of Omnics, known as the _Gwishin_ , had been menacing the South Korean coastline since the beginning of the first crisis. In the recent months, they had grown bolder; their attacks had become less predictable and more dangerous. Several weeks ago, they had launched an raid only a few weeks after their last major assault, which was extremely unusual. Both attacks were barely turned back.

"Alert everyone else, get two jump ships ready", Winston ordered.

"Looks like duty calls", quipped Jack as he departed for the armory.

"Attention all agents. A large scale Omnic attack has commenced against the South Korean city of Busan. They will make landfall in approximately one hour, please be ready to depart within fifteen minutes."

The other agents of Overwatch dropped what they were doing and scrambled to get ready and get to the jump ships.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

 _ **One hour earlier**_

McCree walked out of the room, still lightly chuckling. When he closed the door, Angela and Cassie were alone in the well-lit conference room. Angela looked out of one of the windows for a few seconds, briefly enjoying the view overlooking the ocean before turning towards her old mentor, who had been doing the same thing.

"Cassie…"

"Angela", Cassie was still smiling. When she had first arrived, several of Angela's coworkers had attempted to convince her to reveal what she knew about the collapsed base under the ruins of the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. Cassie had refused, stating that she didn't know much, and that those secrets were not her's to tell. Eventually, Jack Morrison had tried his no-more-mister-nice-guy routine, complete with a loud, dangerous voice and a cold, merciless stare. Cassie had sweetly grinned back and asked him if he practiced that look in the mirror. Reinhardt found that hilarious and broke out in booming laughter, which spread to almost the entire room in a manner of seconds. After that, the agents collectively decided that Angela might have more luck on her own.

"I understand that you value your secrets, but our agents are missing. They may even be dead.", Angela's voice adopted an almost desperate tone; the possibility that Genji might actually be dead was not one that she was ready to accept.

Cassie gave a sympathetic look to her protégé. Starting when she had brought him back from the brink of death, Angela had developed a close relationship with her patient. Most doctors would have described it as being too close, but Cassie was more sympathetic. Genji had been badly injured; even a sarcophagus would have had difficulty repairing the damage. Angela had thrown herself into rebuilding the injured man's body, a more poetic person would say that she had put a part of her soul into it. No one could become that involved with another person and not form a personal connection.

Then there was whatever had happened in China. Neither Angela nor Genji had been willing to discuss the specifics with anyone but their commander, who had also elected to keep his mouth shut. All that Cassie was able to discern was that their bond was solid to the point of being unbreakable. Yet, neither Angela nor Genji would admit how they felt. Angela might not have even been aware of how close they had become until Genji had disappeared.

The agony that her student was hiding accompanied the desperate tone in her voice.

Cassie frowned; even the American military had mostly forgotten about the stargate, she and General O'Neill could have been the only two people left with the knowledge.

She came to a decision; she wasn't telling the world, she was telling a heartsick friend. Besides, the stargate was initially kept a secret to protect the world from the fallout of its revelation. But the world was now a different place; humanity was no longer alone. It was time for the secret to be passed on to the next generation, they could decide what to do with it.

Cassie looked at Angela, who met her gaze. Cassie's features had an extremely serious look on them, which was why Angela was so confused about her response.

"How much do you know about twentieth century technology?"

"What?"

Cassie sighed, this was going to be a long conversation.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

When the announcement came that Busan was in danger, it took Angela a few extra seconds to respond. Nobody could have blamed her; her world had just gotten a lot bigger. And a lot scarier.

 _Aliens_. Doctor Cassandra Fraiser, the legendary doctor who had practically adopted her in the infancy of her medical education, was an alien. But she was also a human.

Stargates. Evil alien parasites. Humans living throughout the galaxy. Angela had difficulty believing anything other than that her mentor was feeling the effects of age more than she had thought. That changed when Cassie began to get into some specifics about how these ' _Go'auld_ ' maintained their illusions of godhood.

Cassie had made a passing reference to a glove-like torture device. Angela had gone pale, which had broken Cassie out of her story to ask her what was wrong.

"Could you… _describe_ what one of these 'hand devices' looks like?"

"I suppose. They have a red jewel in the center, over the palm. They use a ribbon shaped piece of metal to attach themselves to the arm and have a series of metallic finger gloves."

Now Angela was listening. That was a perfect description of the device that had been used on her in China. It had several properties which their scientists had not been able to make heads or tails of, especially given that Genji had practically cut the device and the hand holding it into confetti.

"Have you seen one of these devices before?", Cassie asked, an undernote of alarm entering her voice.

"Yes, but that doesn't matter now. It was destroyed.", Angela said. Cassie noted an expression on her student's face that indicated that she would have to get more details later.

In the present, Angela finally snapped out of her reminiscing.

"Do you want to come with us? This attack sounds like it will require all the doctors we can handle."

Cassie thought for a minute. Despite her age, she was still fully capable of rendering assistance to the injured. She nodded, and the two began to prepare.

Neither wanted to discuss what had been revealed until they returned to the base. The revelation of aliens was not something to be dumped on the team's heads right before a combat mission.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

 _ **One hour later**_

Despite the tradition of audio effects in modern blockbuster thrillers like _The Adventures of SKY-753_ (directed by HAL-Fred Glitchbot) dating back to the original incarnation of _Star Trek_ more than a century ago, space is in fact, silent. Thus, when a white fissure opened against the black starry background several hundred kilometers over a brilliant blue and green planet, it didn't make a sound.

At least not directly. Several satellites briefly detected the strange surge of radiation and the large object that emerged from it and disappeared. However, these readings were not given serious consideration by various national and corporate leaders as they normally would have been. They were busy watching a nightmare unfold; Busan was under attack, and this time, the Gwishin were bringing everything to bear.

Sombra was stunned. As a little girl, she had never dreamed of being able to see the world like this. It was beautiful, the force fields that this ship used in place of windows allowed her to take in the full splendor of the planet below. They were in a low orbit, so the Earth dominated their view. They could see a storm forming over the Indian ocean, as well as evidence of several major cities. It was hard to make out, but they could even see some of the damage done to the Australian countryside by the destruction of their Omnium.

"Wow… I think I understand what Winston felt like now, looking back at the Earth from here.", Tracer interrupted the silence. Sombra would have been annoyed, but she agreed with the sentiment.

"It is beautiful. I wish that Angela could see this for herself.", a slip of the tongue several months ago had revealed Genji's true feeling about Doctor Zeigler to the base personnel. Lena and Sombra were unsurprised, both had figured him out long ago via their own means. The rest of the soldiers and scientists were mildly intrigued, but not really involved enough to have a strong reaction.

Tracer turned to Dr. Jackson. "Do you think we could take this thing for a spin later?"

Doctor Jackson had seen his world from space several times. Unfortunately, most of them involved it being threatened in some horrible way. He responded almost immediately.

"I think that we could work something out."

Lena, who had decided to reveal her actual name shortly after the conference, smiled. She was looking forward to seeing Emily. Maybe a romantic spaceflight would be just the thing to make up for her extended and unexplained absence. She could tell that Genji was having similar thoughts.

Sombra felt a bit left out, so she turned back towards the stunning view. She could practically see the lines of data crisscrossing the surface and traveling between satellites above her. Looking down on the surface, she realized that while she still wanted to know what secrets were hidden on it, that knowledge was becoming more of a means to an increasingly uncertain end.

Wow, Carter was really starting to rub off on her.

The group's contemplation was disrupted by a voice from the wall.

"Lena, Genji, Sombra, didn't you mention an ongoing conflict near South Korea?"

The three looked at each other. This couldn't be good.

"Yeah, why?"

"Sensors are picking up an attack against one of the coastal cities. Busan, I think. Here, let me send you the readings."

There were no terminals in the room, so the information was sent directly to Sombra. She was the first to read it, and before she displayed it in a hologram over her hand, she turned slightly pale.

Lena and Genji had similar reactions. This was larger than any previous attack, even the ones that had taken place during the crisis. Lena spoke up.

"Major, whatever's going on down there, we need to help. They need us."

On the bridge, Major Carter and Teal'c looked at each other.

"Doctor Weir instructed us to avoid taking sides in any conflicts before we have made contact with both sides."

'Teal'c, you can't be considering doing nothing! There are people dying down there! What are we supposed to do, get them to sit down and talk about this?"

Teal'c pondered his teammates words for a few seconds. Daniel Jackson would want to do exactly that. However, Major Carter was correct, this was a time for action.

"No."

Major Carter relayed the decision to the rest of the team. Tracer and Genji looked relieved, as did Sombra. Daniel looked lightly alarmed but appeared to accept the verdict.

A few more communications determined a plan. About a month ago, Sombra had managed to rig up what she called an 'EMP bomb' by copying some of her own technology and combining it with some power cores from staff weapons. They had brought several with them and could use them if things got hairy.

Unfortunately, even with their advanced Go'auld ship, the bomb would disable their shields if they didn't get outside the considerable blast radius, so they were really a last resort.

Tracer would pilot the ship. She had taken to the pilot's chair like a natural, which made sense considering her test pilot past. Genji and Doctor Jackson would help Sombra in the ring room; they might need to ring aboard survivors, and Jackson had the best track record with panicking, armed strangers. Genji would be there to free up space in the cockpit.

A few minutes later, the ship turned and bolted for the besieged city.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

 _ **Five minutes later**_

Two interns in a local hospital and had decided that their patients needed to evacuate more than they did and had sacrificed their spots on the final bus to get them out. It was probably an honorable thing to do, but at the moment, that didn't really affect their situation.

A horde of troopers was chasing them. Several shots from their weapons made their murderous intentions clear. The men ducked into an alley. Both yelped when they saw what was at the other end.

They reflexively dropped to the ground to avoid the bastion's line of fire. Behind them, the horde of troopers arrived.

The men covered their ears and tried to sink further into the filthy alleyway as the incredible noise from the bastion's distinctive Gatling gun grated their eardrums. The weapon stopped, and they were still alive.

Shaking, one of them looked up at the ancient siege robot. It had reconfigured itself into its reconnaissance form.

"Beep-boop", the Bastion chirped at them and waved. A bird landed on its shoulder and gave what almost sounded like an encouraging tweet. Both fully standing, the men looked behind them. The entire group of troopers lay twitching and in pieces behind them.

"Boop", the machine broke them out of their shock and waved for them to follow. Too stunned to ask any questions, the men followed it to safety.

About a week later, a local shopkeeper found footage of the incident on his security camera. It went viral, and that Bastion unit with its bird was forever immortalized as a symbol of Omnic heroism.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

 _ **Several miles off the coast of Busan, at the same time.**_

"Hana, pull back, you're going to get yourself killed!"

"I can't, they've got a hold on that jet."

A moment later, the debate was rendered moot as a tentacle breached the cockpit of the fighter jet in question, instantly and messily killing the pilot.

Dae-hyun really wanted to freak out. He had served as Hana's ground controller ever since she had been recruited by MEKA. Before that, he had always helped her on her various crazy exploits, keeping her equipment in repair and reminding her to take care of herself. It was a tiring job.

This was different. As Hana would put it, the Gwishin were playing to win. Three titans, hordes of assault ships, called sentinels after some old American movie, and troop carriers had been brought to bear. If they lost the battle, they lost the city, possibly the entire country. Hana didn't make a habit of losing, and she wasn't willing to start one now.

"Ok, ROKAF wants to try another air strike against the T-1, if they can get its shields down, you and Overlord can..."

"Dae-hyun?"

Dae-Hyun had not been attacked, not had the link been severed as Hana feared. Her childhood friend was simply stunned.

"Hana, can you see it?"

"See what? There's too many sentinels flying around… oh", Hana saw it. A silver ship, way bigger than her mech was on an attack vector. She hoped that it didn't try to get too close; the titans had developed a super-powerful barrier for the titans that blocked pretty much everything thrown at them, including slower moving mechs that tried to bypass it, as Casino had found out.

The ship didn't make the same mistake. It angled up and fired its own weapons at the leading titan.

 _FWOOM! FWOOM!_

Bright orange shots left the ship and impacted the titan. The Omnics hadn't reacted in time to prevent it from completing a full bombing run.

From the shoreline, the view was spectacular and terrifying. It was a clear day, but the battle over the sea had left a lot of floating debris, most of it from downed carriers and sentinels. Several towers of smoke rose from different parts of the city, and the airspace near the titans was a complicated dance between MEKA and hordes of sentinels. The titans had been slowly marching towards the city, ready to reduce it to rubble.

Then the ship arrived, visible to most of the evacuating residents. Cheers went up when several pulses of energy weapon fire from the mysterious vessel caused the shields on one of the titans to fail with a loud CRACK!

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

 _ **On Board the Al'Kesh**_

"Shields down on the leading titan!", Tracer called out. The bridge crew acknowledged.

"We've got company!", Major Carter was the first to notice that several wings of the strange tentacled robots were now tailing them.

Teal'c used his own control station to fire the rotating turret at the pursuers, taking two down with each shot. It wasn't enough.

"Tracer!"

"I can't shake them Major!"

Carter thought for a moment, then opened the comm line, "Sombra, get ready."

In the ring room, Sombra primed one of her EMP bombs and set it inside the ring platform. If they were resorting to using one of these, they must have been getting desperate.

Back on the bridge, Tracer was taking in Carter's plan as she tried her best to evade the Omnics. They were going to get close to the nearest titan and detonate the device. It would disable any nearby flying Omnics, the titan's shields, and their shields if they didn't get out of range in time. Unfortunately, they would have to detonate it almost immediately to prevent the omnics from accessing and disabling it.

"You got it!", Tracer began to weave towards the closest titan, being careful not to hit its shields. Their own shields were getting dangerously low, so they wouldn't lose much when the device went off.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

"What are they doing?" Dae-hyun had gotten over his shock at the unknown ship. Whoever was piloting it was as crazy as Hana.

"They're planning something! Everyone, get back!", could tell that whoever they were, they had a plan.

She was right, a flash came from beneath the ship. A moment later, before it could escape, a loud electrical crackling sound accompanied a brilliant flash of purple light. Hundreds of sentinels instantly fell out of the sky, and the titan's shields flared and vanished.

"Take that titan down! We've got this!", led the remaining members of MEKA towards the disabled Omnic. It and its still shielded companion began to turn away from the city, their escorts moving to cover their retreat.

"Pull out, it's too risky!", a new voice, that of Captain Myung came over the line. Everyone but obeyed. Dae-Hyun clenched his teeth, she was going to get herself killed.

shouted in anger as her fusion canons activated, landing a crippling blow against the titan's power system. It stumbled but kept moving at a reduced speed. A moment later, a cloud of missiles released from a nearby sentinel proved her captain right.

"Hana!", Dae-Hyun shouted. There was no response.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

"They're retreating!", Tracer shouted. The remaining bridge crew smiled.

"Wait, one of the pilots got hit, they're going down, they need help!", Tracer then noticed a falling mech, an ejecting pilot, and a swarm of murderous looking Omnics.

"We can make in time; get the rings over her and we'll bring her aboard!", Cater responded.

Tracer developed a focused expression as she raced the Gwishin for their objective. The rest were still retreating, it seemed like these ones had a grudge.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Hana fell towards the water. Unlike the attack several weeks ago, it was daytime, so a potential rescue would be easier.

The moment this thought crossed her mind, a swarm of sentinels blocked out the sunlight above her, leaving only their angry red eyes. The other MEKA pilots were too far away, and she had lost track of the mysterious ship, so she probably wasn't getting out of this one.

Hana had seen what the sentinels did to captured MEKA pilots. She hit the water but was too stunned to resist her buoyant flight suit as it dragged her back to the surface. Before she could try to swim away, a large object stopped directly over her. Hana looked up in confusion, explosions filtered to her ears as the sentinels began to fire at whatever was obstructing their prey.

A hole opened, revealing a bright light. A set of rings came down and surrounded her. Then there was a flash.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

"We've got her, get us out of here!", Sombra shouted into the comm. Tracer obliged a fraction of a second too late.

BOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!

"That was the reactor coolant system! It looks like we've got about five minutes!", a voice from the bridge clarified the explosion.

Hana was dazed. Where was she? She focused, recognizing one of the room's occupants.

"Genji Shimada? From Overwatch?"

"Yes. Are you injured?"

Hana considered his question. The answer was yes, and quite badly. Dae-Hyun wasn't going to let her forget about this.

"That voice, what's wrong?"

The voice came back on, as if to clarify, "I got in contact with ROKAF, they're going to let us ring onto a nearby base before we ditch the ship. We might have enough time for it to pilot itself into the remaining titan."

This felt eerily familiar. Hana asked the Overwatch ninja what she needed to do. The middle aged white man answered her question after Genji looked at him.

"Here, let's just get you out of the rings for now. It looks like we'll need to use them in a minute."

graciously accepted the help as she got to her feet.

A few minutes later, the bridge crew entered the room. Tracer had set the ship to autopilot, they had about thirty seconds to ring off before the ship took off after the fleeing Omnics. They all entered the rings, which flashed and deposited them on a bright white roof.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

blinked. MEKA, they were on top of MEKA. The roof wasn't a very interesting place; it was almost entirely white with a few odd machines protruding from place to place. The smoke from the battle was still pungent over here, and she could see columns of smoke coming up from her home.

Before she had the chance to feel horrified at the destruction, one of the ship's crew, a tall, dark man with a golden tattoo on his forehead pointed some kind of long weapon at her.

"Get down!"

Hana ducker, the staff fired a shot like the ones fired by the ship, but much smaller. A trooper squealed behind her. The rest of the crew began firing, while she pulled herself up, took out her blaster, and joined in.

It wasn't as bad as she had feared. Within thirty seconds, the Omnics were all dispatched.

"Freeze, lower your weapons!"

A group of soldiers had emerged from a stairway.

"Are you the ones from the ship?"

One of the crew members, a blond woman in an antiquated military uniform responded affirmatively. Both sides lowered their weapons.

"Hana, is that you?", Dae-Hyun had seen the ship stop over his fallen friend. His voice sounded hopeful.

"Dae-Hyun?", Hana moved to the front of the group, looking for her friend.

"HANA! YOU'RE ALIVE!", Dae-Hyun rushed towards his friend. She did the same, and the two embraced, each glad to see that the other was alive.

Coincidentally, at that moment, the ship's reactor finally overloaded, and a brilliant explosion went off in the distance, creating a beautiful glow followed by a deep rumbling, marking an end to the Gwishin attack on the city. Even if the final titan hadn't been destroyed, there was no way that the entire Omnic force had escaped unscathed.

Hana released her friend.

"You know, I think that I'll reconsider getting you into one of those fancy restaurants this time."

Still feeling elated from the discovery that his friend had survived her craziest stunt to date, Dae-Hyun grinned and laughed.

A moment later, both groups began to move towards the stairwell. Both MEKA and Overwatch wanted to meet them.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

"Mercy, this is Winston, over."

"Mercy reporting, what is it?"

"We need you at MEKA, they have the crew from the ship.", Winston paused, wondering how Angela would react to the news that their missing agents were among the crew. He decided to hold off on mentioning that until Mercy was safely out of the field.

Mercy was intrigued. She had not seen the ship directly, but she had heard reports about it. From what she had distilled from the rumors, it was about the size of a small office building, pyramid shaped, and used advanced energy weapons that outclassed even those that the titans were using.

During her brief discussions with Cassie, who had heard the same rumors, Cassie had suggested that the ship might be a Go'auld al'kesh. Whether or not it represented the Go'auld was uncertain, al'kesh's were a common ship throughout the galaxy, and often wound up in the hands of pirates, Tok'ra, and even occasionally Earth. Also, it would be strange for the Go'auld to only send in one ship.

Now she had the opportunity to get to the bottom of this. She responded.

"Understood. May I request that Dr. Fraiser be brought as well? I believe that she may have some insights to offer."

"Affirmative, see you soon. Winston out.", Angela never had told them what she had learned from Cassie. Winston had been able to tell from the expression on her voice that it was big, but she had just told them that it could wait until after the mission.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Captain Myung had been ordered to debrief the crew of the mysterious ship along with two representatives from Overwatch, who she met up with while walking towards the conference room.

One was instantly recognizable: _Mercy_. The famous Overwatch medic, who was still in her almost as famous valkyrie suit, had a distracted look on her face. The other representative, a familiar looking elderly woman, saw the question forming in her head and answered it immediately.

"We had two agents go missing a few months ago, they match some of the descriptions that your people sent over."

Captain Myung nodded. They had arrived, and her superiors, going up to the president himself, wanted answers quickly. The whole world was watching, and everyone knew that the ramifications could be massive. Cassie gave her one more piece of information.

"Oh, by the way, my name is Dr. Cassandra Fraiser."

"Captain Myung, MEKA"

She opened the door into the conference room. It was an inviting space; a single smooth, white, ovular table provided a place for its occupants to work and talk. One side of the room was mostly windows; they could see parts of the damaged city from them, and they let in plenty of natural light. The walls and floor matched the style of the table; clean and inviting. Between the advanced technology these people possessed and their rather spectacular introduction, her superiors had been insistent on making a good first impression. Captain Myung agreed.

All three women instantly focused on different people. Captain Myung noticed Hana Song and her partner, Dae-Hyun. Both immediately stood at attention.

Cassie had a more dramatic reaction. Her eyes went wide, and her face became a bit pale. Her person of interest, a blond, middle aged woman in an American looking uniform, returned the gesture.

"Sam?"

"Cassie… Is that you?"

In lieu of a professional greeting, Cassie ran towards the woman and embraced her tightly. The woman returned the gesture, several tears and a smile on her face confirmed to Captain Myung that these two people knew each other. Two other people from the ship's crew gathered around the elderly doctor.

"Cassie… You've gotten older."

Cassie hugged her godmother for a few seconds longer before turning to look at another familiar face. Daniel hadn't aged a day, it felt surreal.

"Danny, she went in for another hug."

"It is good to see you again, Cassandra Fraiser."

Teal'c. Cassie quickly pulled him in, feeling a bit of glee that he returned the gesture this time. Remembering that she had a mission, she pulled away, a warm smile on her face.

"It's so good to see all of you again."

Meanwhile, Angela had been going through a reunion of her own.

The moment she had entered the room, she had seen him, and he had seen her.

"Genji"

"Angela"

Genji was stunned. Would Angela be angry with him for disappearing. Had she missed him as much as he had missed her?

Angela raced across the room and enveloped her ex patient in a tight embrace, answering a lot of his questions. A few seconds later, she pulled away to get a better look at her missing friend.

"I'm so happy that you're alive! When you went missing, everyone thought you were probably dead. We were searching for months! Where were you?"

Before Genji had time to respond, she noticed another familiar face. _Sombra_.

"What is she doing here? Is she threatening you? Did she get into your cybernetics?"

Genji's normally lightning fast processing speed had abandoned him in the face of reuniting with the woman he loved. He just stared at her with a mixture of love, fear, and confusion.

Tracer, who had been enjoying the spectacle from the side, took mercy on the ninja and the hacker.

"Relax Doc, she's with us. We've got a lot to catch up on."

Angela noticed Lena and gave her a quick hug.

During both reunions, Sombra had moved towards the center of the two groups. She made eye contact with Captain Myung, who had a resigned look on her face.

"So, Captain, where do we start?"

Captain Myung was a little unnerved, how did this woman know her name? Regardless, her question might just get this meeting on track.

What did she want to know first? Where did that ship some from? Why were some of the crew dressed in antiquated American military fatigues? Who were these people?

That last one. It was simple; she could build from there.

"Who are you?"

Sombra looked around. Most of the room was engrossed in tearful reunions. Even the mech pilot and the tech were still trading glances with each other. She looked back at the captain, who had an expression that reminded her of Doctor Weir on a particularly difficult day running the Alpha Site. She began to identify her teammates.

"That would be Major Samantha Carter, Doctor Daniel Jackson, Teal'c, and Genji Shimada. I'm pretty certain that anyone would recognize Lena Oxton over here.", by this point, the rest of the room had quieted down, and was focusing on Sombra.

"And you are?"

Sombra frowned. She hadn't even revealed her actual name to the people in the SGC.

"Call me Sombra"

That got a reaction. Captain Myung had heard rumors of an elusive hacker collective, one that had mysteriously gone silent several months ago. The tension in the room began to rise.

"Sombra? The hacker group? Man, I hate hackers like you, they give gamers a bad name!"

Sombra blinked and looked at Hana. She was grinning, that was obviously a joke. This girl was good.

"Well, I'm pretty sure you're thinking of a different kind of hacking. And it's just me, no collective."

A few months ago, Sombra would not have revealed that information. But now she was beginning to feel a sense of attachment to the people at the SGC, and she didn't want to risk misrepresenting them or herself.

Also, she wasn't above a little professional pride when the situation allowed it.

"In any event, I'm sure that you have a lot of questions. Major Carter and Doctor Jackson are probably the best people to answer them. Me and the Overwatch pals here just got dragged along for the ride."

Sg1 collectively looked at Sombra. That wasn't entirely accurate, they had all played major roles. Sombra had even saved their lives. Technically, her EMP bombs had won the battle against the Gwishin. They would have to clear that up later.

Daniel Jackson was generally the team's first contact expert, so they looked to him. Where to begin?

"You may want to sit down, it's kind of a long story."

Captain Myung didn't doubt that at all. She and both of her underlings took a seat.

"Also, if you are recording or broadcasting this, you should be aware that we choose to keep this knowledge secret from our own people for years, for good reason."

Captain Myung nodded, she and her superiors had guessed that they would want to keep at least some parts of this interview under wraps. Hana and Dae-Hyun both knew how to keep their mouths shut, despite what someone watching the mech pilot's stream might think.

Daniel sighed, this was a long story. He wondered if he should just make an introduction video.

No, that was a bit too tacky.

"In 1928, a man named Dr. Paul Langford led an archeological expedition in Giza, Egypt. He discovered a device that we now call the stargate."

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

 _ **Several weeks later**_

Over its years of operation, the SGC and its derivative programs had faced many threats to their secrecy. Reporters would get their hands on a leak. Foothold situations would spring up. New technologies would raise hard to answer questions.

Nevertheless, they had maintained their cover. They had slain gods. They had saved gods. They had fought off invasions. They had had personnel die, and had several of them come back. As it turned out, multiple resurrections did not sit well with the bureaucrats.

So, the original SG1 consisting of Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson, and Teal'c were understandably unhappy with how their decades long reign of secrecy finally ended.

Oddly enough, their direct intervention in a highly televised invasion with an alien assault ship wasn't what had revealed the existence of aliens. That could have easily been passed off as a prototype attack ship created by any number of governments or corporations for any number of purposes.

As much as the pilots in MEKA enjoyed fame, they understood the meaning of the word _classified_.

No, it was a _fucking_ tabloid reporter. Some bottom-feeding, scum-sucking, bottom-of-the-barrel reporter who made a living off going up to the line between investigative journalism and blatant harassment and blowing past it without a second thought.

Hana had been assigned to the expedition to unbury the Ancient weapons platform in Antarctica. A coalition of governments led by South Korea and the United States were extremely eager to get their hands on it and the technology within. SG1 was happy to help; they felt that their commanding officer had been frozen down there for long enough. Orders were drawn up, people were assigned, and Hana had read her own piece of the paperwork in what she thought was the safety of her secured quarters in MEKA.

In fairness, this wasn't your average tabloid reporter. He had ambition. He had been spying on the MEKA pilot for months, ignoring the myriad of minor details that he would have normally sold to a magazine. He knew that once those details were published, his "source" would go dark almost immediately.

So, he waited. Eventually, something big would come up. Something big enough to get himself out of tabloid reporting and into real journalism.

And oh boy, did something big come up.

Aliens. Hana song was being sent to uncover an alien base. The orders were remarkably detailed; they had also informed him that the alien base was known to multiple powerful governments, that it had already been uncovered once before being buried by some catastrophe, and that this entire thing was going to be kept under wraps.

Some additional, quiet investigation had turned up more. That ship that had saved the day over Busan was no prototype, it was an alien vessel. Evidently, it had been crewed by humans from Earth, several of who had been missing for a long time. Seventy years couldn't possibly be right, but he wasn't able to get any more without going public.

The reporter pondered his discoveries. There was no way that something this big hadn't been found by other reporters. He had no idea how whoever was behind this had managed to keep them silent, but it couldn't have been legal. There were quite a few possibilities; would anyone suspect something if one or two reporters simply disappeared? Probably not. You could conceivably buy off or threaten another few. For someone who was willing to keep something like this a secret from the public, that probably wouldn't be an issue.

He couldn't just blow this open like a standard exposé. He needed to make sure that the information, which he had a decent amount of, hit all at once and through multiple outlets. If he did this the normal way, any article that he published would vanish within a few minutes. If he did an interview, it would go off the air due to technical issues, and he would develop some problem that kept him from appearing on air.

The solution was to not just poke a hole in the dam of secrecy. The solution was to blow a gigantic hole in it.

And blow it open he had. Simultaneously, multiple news sources, ranging from his usual clientele to respectable news outlets had received different pieces of the puzzle that he had partially put together. Other pieces had been leaked online and were making their way through conspiracy theory forums. The denizens of those forums had seized on the opportunity, uncovering more information, some true, some false, but all damaging.

It turned out that the primary perpetrators were the American and South Korean governments. The reporter had wisely fled the latter before releasing his information and was holed up in Numbani when the first 'damage control' team arrived. An unmarked van had tried to abduct him from his home, and nearly succeeded. The Numbani authorities had anticipated the situation however and caught them in the act. Freedom of the press was taken quite seriously in the African city, as were unsanctioned extrajudicial kidnappings, so when the kidnappers turned out to be linked back to the American government, the entire operation turned into an embarrassing and extremely public international incident, and the secrecy around the stargate was finally and irrevocably shattered.

Aliens were real. The Americans had first discovered this back in the late 1990s and had proceeded to launch a clandestine operation to explore the galaxy in secret. Of course, they had also managed to start several wars in the process. Evidently, they kept it a secret for so long because they thought that 'the world wasn't ready to know'.

Needless to say, that had not gone over well.

However, the fallout had several mitigating factors. There was no active alien threat to Earth. Evidently, whatever the Americans had been doing, they were all spooked, and avoided the place like a plague. Also, the arrival of a friendly alien ship which had promptly sacrificed itself to stop an Omnic attack was hard to ignore. And of course, most of these events had taken place decades ago, and most of the people who had made the decision to keep the stargate a secret were dead.

Ultimately, both governments were forced to start revealing details. The Americans had reclaimed their officer to assist in the excavation of the SGC and the recovery of the stargate. Along with the South Koreans and several other governments, they were leading an expedition to recover the Ancient weapons platform in Antarctica. Oddly enough, it was located almost directly under an old Overwatch base. Nobody at this point thought that was a coincidence.

In some ways, the revelation helped the South Korean government. It was an open secret that they were harboring and working with Overwatch; they were even sending some of their agents on the Antarctic expedition. Overwatch was still banned, but this wasn't getting as much attention due to the rewriting of history and the revelation of extraterrestrial life.

Dae-Hyun wasn't a decision maker in his government, but he did feel that they should accept small blessings where they could find them.

"Are you OK Hana?"

Hana looked at her friend. Her normally makeup was badly streaked from tears. Her hair had lost its normal tidiness.

"It's all my fault, how could I have been such an _idiot?_ "

"This wasn't your fault. You followed all the security protocols to a letter.", Dae-Hyun felt a little nervous as he said this. It was true, but he wondered what would have happened if he had been the victim instead of Hana. She looked at him for a few more moments.

"Then why does it feel like we're being punished?"

"We're on an expedition to save our country. And possibly the world."

"Really, Dae-Hyun? It still seems a little unbelievable."

"I doubt that they would pull you or me from active duty if it wasn't real. And besides, if they are punishing you, why would they be sending me?"

Hana looked at him for a moment, and then moved closer. Dae-Hyun accepted her request for a hug.

"If that ship hadn't shown up, we would have lost"

There was no arguing with that. Hana was scared, they had had close calls before, but it had been apparent from the moment the first alarms went off that it would have taken a miracle to push the Gwshin back this time. All the pilots were slowly realizing just how close they had come to total defeat.

"But it did. And now the Gwishin have been pushed back, and we might have a way to defeat them for good."

Hana raised her head. Dae-Hyun was right, that base could change everything. And she was going to help them access it.

Even better, she would have her lifelong friend by her side.

Honestly, it would be more like she would be by his side. Evidently, he had an extremely rare genetic marker that would allow him to interface with the technology a group of aliens called 'The Ancients' had left behind.

Hana grinned when she remembered learning that bit of news. Evidently the platform's primary weapons were a swarm of remote controlled missiles with even more maneuverability than her mech. They were directly controlled by the user, which would have made them the perfect weapon for her and her fellow pilots. However, since Dae-Hyun was the only person in MEKA who had the gene, she had taken it upon herself to do her best to bring his skills and reflexes up to her own standards.

As far as anyone knew, _only_ Hana Song met those standards.

Nonetheless, they had had fun, even if both were exhausted by hours of training every day. Command had approved of the pilot's plan and had allowed them to take a significant amount of time out of their schedules to implement it.

And Hana had seen results. While he still wasn't nearly as skilled as her, Dae-Hyun was more than ready to use the drones if the need arose.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

 _ **Several days after the Battle of Busan**_

No sign of her. Reaper scowled; Moira had been captured by Overwatch and was now in the hands of the American authorities. The EMP bomb that had been used against the titan attacking Busan had clearly been one of Sombra's creations, but there had been no sign of her since. Ultimately, his original team of four was now down to two for the foreseeable future.

Compounding this problem was his employers. Reaper had never held any illusions about the true character of Talon's leadership; they would have no problem backstabbing him, nor he them. They were clearly hiding information about Sombra from him, so he wouldn't be able to involve them in her retrieval.

"Reaper, sensors are detecting an anomaly four hundred meters off the shore.", Widomaker broke him out of his thoughts.

Reaper and Widomaker had taken their dropship to investigate the site where the battle had taken place. With any luck, there would be some clues about the whereabouts of their missing teammate. So far, they had only found a whole lot of wreckage.

Widomaker turned the sensors to analyze the anomaly. It appeared to be a woman trying to swim for shore. However, she had virtually no thermal signature; she should be dead. Also, she appeared to be far denser than any human.

After an acknowledgement from Reaper, she turned the ship, and silently brought it over the anomaly. The 'person' looked up and shielded her eyes. She was clearly in distress and reached up towards the ship. Sighing, Reaper reached down, grabbed her hand, and hauled her into the ship.

Kim Seo-yeon was having a very bad day. The Gwishin had proven to be extremely unfriendly and had spent the last several months attempting to extract information from her. She had only escaped when they were distracted by some kind of attack. She had spent the intervening hours attempting to swim for shore, not an easy task for someone made of dense nanites.

If she had been human, she would have had a sick feeling in her stomach. Her mission was supposed to be a secret; it had been vital that she not risk disrupting whatever was stopping the humans from leaving their home world. Then she had gotten herself captured; the Gwishin would doubtlessly have analyzed the wreckage of her ship, which would provide them with a major advantage in their war against the humans. If the alliance figured this out, this would be interpreted as an attack on Earth.

She didn't even want to think about how the humans on Earth would react if they figured out where the Gwishin had gotten their sudden breakthrough in shielding technology from.

She looked at her savior. An extremely unfriendly looking skull themed mask stared back. She was really starting to hate this planet.

"What are you?", the voice dripped with menace.

"My name is Kim, I…", she couldn't come up with a convincing story fast enough.

The masked man pointed a weapon at her. From the lethal looking shotgun, the black trench coat, the skull mask, and the over-the-top menace, Kim decided that this human and Sokar would have gotten along splendidly.

"We know that you aren't human."

Kim sighed. Technically she didn't need to breathe, but part of imitating humans was learning the nonverbal communication indicators.

"No, I'm not"

The man waited for an answer, not lowering his weapon.

"To most people, we are known as replicators."

The mane kept staring at her.

"Machines, I'm an advanced machine."

The man didn't appear to like this answer, "So the tin cans look like people now."

This wasn't going well.

"She is unlike any known Omnic model, she may know something about the silver ship.", a human with an oddly flat sounding voice called out from the front of the ship.

The man looked back at her.

"Well?"

Kim sighed again, in theory, human form replicators were bullet proof. However, seventy years had passed on this world since their first encounter. Who knew what kind of improvements they had made to their weapons? Also, they weren't truly bulletproof; every hit on them disabled a portion of their nanite cells, too many would disable or even destroy them.

Between the Gwishin's crude attempts to extract information and the prolonged exposure to seawater, Kim knew that she wasn't going to fight her way out of this; she was having difficulty maintaining cohesion as it was.

"We are a race of self-replicating machines. Seventy years ago, human forms such as myself were created to better understand your people, and how you were able to defeat us."

Kim could tell that she had raised more questions than she had answered. At least these people were willing to talk things out instead of trying to kill her.

Several hours of explanations towards the disbelieving humans slowly began to clear up some of the confusion. Kim could tell that tensions were decreasing when one evidently important fact came up.

"About five of your months ago, we detected a pirate transmission that indicated that one of your people's old bases had been reclaimed. I was sent here to determine whether your people had become a threat again."

Reaper perked up, five months? If this 'stargate' was real and was really located in the facility that Sombra had infiltrated, then the timing was about right.

"Did this transmission tell you who was there?"

Kim shook her head.

"We were barely able to make it out."

She decided to take a small risk.

"Are you looking for a specific person?"

"Yes"

"Who?"

Reaper paused. This _machine_ was trying to be friendly, which was really beginning to grind on his nerves. But she might have information about Sombra's whereabouts. Maintaining as much hostility and menace as he could, he described his missing teammate.

Kim didn't recognize much until Reaper mentioned an _EMP_. Before she had departed, the collective had intercepted rumors of a Go'auld suicide bomber who was stopped by a mysterious device. The two sounded similar.

"Does this _EMP_ emit a purple wave of light? And does it have the ability to bypass failsafe systems in electronic systems?"

Reaper nodded.

"Before I left, there was a rumor of such a device being used by a woman against a Go'auld attack. We didn't know anything about it when I left."

Reaper looked at her. He had his information, now what?

Kim saw that the man had the information he needed. She quickly decided that the correct course of action was to keep being useful.

"If this teammate of yours is off world, I may be able to help you retrieve her."

Reaper pondered her offer. He didn't like working with Omnics, but this was an unusual circumstance. He looked back at her.

"Welcome aboard"

Somehow, even that sounded like a threat. Kim nodded.

"I was damaged during my capture and escape. I will need to go inactive for several hours to recover."

The man nodded. It wasn't entirely true. A substantial percentage of her cells had been damaged or destroyed. She needed specialized materials to repair them. But, she could patch some of the damage with a few hours of what could be called 'sleep'.

Kim leaned back into her chair and went motionless. If she had been a human, Reaper would have thought she was dead. He waved his hand in front of her eyes. Nothing.

"You think she can help us?"

"We don't really have any other leads."

The two humans on the dropship continued their investigation of the area surrounding Busan. They didn't find anything else.

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

 **A/N: So, this was the story's first major battle. I do plan on having others and may adjust how I depict them.**

 **This first battle is pretty much the end of the scenes that I imagined when I first conceived of this story. I do have several new plot ideas however, so the story will go on.**


End file.
